Veiled Thorns
by greyslostwho
Summary: UNLIKELY TO BE COMPLETED. It meant he would hold her hand, help her survive. Be happy when she could, be content when she could, but when she couldn't, he would pull her through. Sequel to Roses Behind Mirrors. RxEm, AU, AH!
1. Chapter 1

**VEILED THORNS**

**Set seven years after Roses Behind Mirrors, Rosalie and Emmett are newly wed and moving back home. But life's ups and downs aren't finished with them yet…**

**Disclaimer: Nothing's mine, except the events of RBM, and any OCs I deign to introduce :)**

**It's a short first chapter, just to get you guys started on where we are with this fic… :)**

**Just to let you know, certain events of the end of RBM will not be addressed for a very long time [I'm talking about Royce here, guys], they're not the central focus of this story. And with that, I give you…. Veiled Thorns!**

**Chapter One**

Rosalie collapsed onto the threadbare couch, exhausted. She puffed out a large sigh and looked up at her husband, a goofy grin on her face, looking out of place amongst the perfect features.

"I'm beat, Emmett. What d'you say we leave the unpacking for a bit and just… I dunno… sleep?"

He grinned, dimples showing as wide as ever and bent over to kiss her lightly. "I told you you didn't have to help me carry it all, you silly woman…"

She opened her mouth in mock horror, grabbing him roughly by the arm and pulling him down onto the old couch that Edward had donated to them whilst the apartment was still being decorated, beside her. He slung an arm loosely around her shoulders and grinned again, kissing her cheek. She shoved him away lightly, but her smile was wide.

"I wanted to help." She said, "Moving into our first real home together… I wanted to help."

"Well, I wouldn't want to sleep on this thing, Rose, I'm not being difficult or anything but it's probably older than me…"

"It doesn't really fit, does it? In this beautiful place…"

He looked around, at the bare walls, although freshly painted in pastel colours of Rosalie's choice, and the cream carpets. "It's not quite beautiful, babe."

"Yet." She added, resting her head on his shoulder. "Give us a few weeks and it will be…"

He chuckled, "I can't believe you're letting my sister help with the interior design…"

"She's very good at it…"

He laughed, "But she's got some strange taste, our Alice. Remember her dorm room at college…"

Rosalie laughed out loud, remembering the bright purple carpet and the lime green walls, when Alice had gone through her psychedelic phase.

She laughed. "I'm ready to drop, though."

He ruffled her hair lightly. "Come on, Mrs Cullen, we've got lots of unpacking to do." He tugged her out of the couch, lightly, by her wrist. She squealed a little, giggling, until he pulled her right up, so they were nose to nose, eyes meeting.

"That's Dr Cullen to you." She laughed, and put her finger to his lips just as he leant in to kiss her. "And I thought we had unpacking to do…"

She mock-groaned, making him laugh and kiss her lightly on the nose, before they both turned to their boxes of belongings, accumulated over 25 years of their lives, more apart than together, and finally everything was coming together in one apartment, all their own, barely two blocks away from the Practice.

The Practice, yet to be named, was Carlisle's creation, a task he had undertaken as he grew tired of simply running Forks Hospital. A small converted building not far from one of the major Seattle Hospitals, it was more for personal wellness and holistic medicine than actual medical treatment, though Carlisle spent one day a week out there, having passed on the Chief of Surgery position to another young, up-and-coming surgeon from La Push called Sam Uley. It was still getting off the ground at the moment, but when Emmett and Rosalie got into their last years of their various degrees, Emmett having changed partway through his course to take Physiotherapy and Sport Science, unable to do something so… detached, he wanted something more vocational, Carlisle offered them both positions at the Practice when they were qualified.

And that's where they were now. Moving into an apartment in Seattle, ready to start their careers in the city, young and in love and…

Rosalie's thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of her phone.

"Rosalie Cullen." She answered, and Emmett looked up and smiled, thinking he would never get used to the sound of his name tacked onto the end of hers, sealing their deal once and for all, making everything so perfect and _definite. _He grinned, but Rosalie's face turned serious.

"But he's ok, right, Alice?" a deep breath, and Emmett was by her side, taking her hand in his. Gradually, Rosalie's face relaxed into a smile. "You had me really worried… what are you doing on the phone to me? Go get him! Bye, Alice."

She pressed a button and set the phone down on Edward's old couch. Emmett didn't need to ask anything, just looked at her questioningly. She smiled weakly.

"Jasper was in a car chase, and the car ran off the road. But he's fine…"

Emmett's eyebrows furrowed, as if asking why Alice had phoned. Rosalie shrugged. She wasn't sure when they had gotten to this point – when they had gotten beyond words, beyond talking.

"I think she phones me because she likes to share it, sort of… the worry, the fear… the relief when he's ok. It's difficult for her, Emmett…"

"You think I don't know?" he mused, tucking a strand of blonde behind her ears, "She's my sister, Rose, and she may not call me as often, but I know… she… she didn't think she'd find it this hard… she sees you, I guess, as a kind of kindred spirit…"

Rosalie kissed him lightly. "I sometimes wish Jazz'd got a desk job." She chuckled, a hint of bitterness underlying her tone. But then she smiled brightly, and stepped out of husband's arms. "Anyway, we need to unpack! I want this place to look beautiful!"

Emmett Cullen grinned at his new wife. She was a changed woman from the sobbing, broken girl he had met, almost eight years ago now, she was strong and bright and optimistic… she had addressed everything in her past, down to the nastiest of details, and although he had been wary when she'd called up Chelsea Waltham's family, and nervous when she had gone to visit Royce King and the others in Rochester State Penitentiary, everything that she had done had helped to break down her walls, helped to open her up, helped to make her happier.

She'd got her Psychology degree and her Psychiatry doctorate, and he knew, although she would blush and deny it, that she was well on the way to becoming an excellent shrink. Without barriers, full of connection and empathy and gentility. He was so proud of her, more so than he could even voice. And standing there, in the bare, yet-to-be decorated apartment, ripping open a brown cardboard box full of kitchen utensils, Emmett was astounded – again – by how much he loved her.

It really was beautiful.

**A/N: Hope you like the start!!! I hope to have regular updates, as with RBM, as long as the reviewing continues!!! And check out the new fic-pic, under the link in my profile and it'll probs be my avatar, at least for a while :)**

**[Just to let you all know, I got two As and a B in my exams I took earlier this year, when I was starting RBM!!!]**

**Review again, be free with the concrit, drop me a line on where you want to see this going, whatever….**

**I'm back!!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

"It's open, come in!" Carlisle called, and Emmett ushered Rosalie through the door, hand placed lightly, lovingly in the small of her back. They closed the door behind them, and Emmett turned back around, only to be pounced on by a small, auburn-haired whirlwind, knocking him a few steps backwards and setting Rosalie into giggles.

"Uncle Emmett! Auntie Rosie!" the little girl laughed as she launched herself into her favourite uncle's arms, laughing a bright, tinkling laugh that always reminded Rosalie of Esme. Emmett held her at arms length, right up in the air, and her eyes danced with excitement. Renesmee, known as Nessie to everyone except her mother, was Bella and Edward's daughter, five years old and already chattering away about anything and everything. She was the perfect combination of her parents, Edward's coppery hair in ringlets reaching the tops of her shoulders, Bella's chocolate eyes, Edward's crooked smile, Bella's pale skin. She… hadn't exactly been planned; her parents had both been nineteen, Edward in his first year of med school, Bella starting to study fertility science. Although the pregnancy had been a complete mistake, from the moment the test came up positive it had been clear that although it wasn't exactly what they wanted, they were both happy. Edward had proposed within a couple of weeks, and they'd all headed up to New York City where the two of them were in college for the quiet wedding.

As Bella's pregnancy had progressed, Edward had managed to get a transfer to the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Bella moved back home to Forks, Edward coming back for weekends whilst he saved the money for a flat near the college. When Renesmee was born, they'd found a little place and they moved in straight away. For weeks, it had been so hard, the whole family had struggled to cope, balancing baby care with Edward's demanding degree and Bella desperately trying to earn at the same time. Both Carlisle and Esme and Charlie and Sue Clearwater, his new wife, were fundamental in helping them all, along with Alice and Jasper providing a universal, any time, any place babysitting service. They'd pulled through, and Bella had got herself a job as a secretary at Forks High school now Nessie was in kindergarten, and things began to come together again, until none of them could imagine what it would be like without the little girl. Now they were living in a little townhouse in Forks, Edward finishing his final year on placement in Forks General Hospital.

"Hey, Nessie." Emmett said, kissing his niece on the top of head as he set her down. Seconds later she was wrapped around Rosalie's legs, hugging her.

"Haven't seen you… ages…" she lisped, smiling up at her, Rosalie's heart swelling a little. There was something about children, she always thought, children that loved you, with adoration pouring out of their eyes and smiles lighting up their faces. Something you couldn't quite put your finger on, yet something you couldn't forget. Something pure and beautiful and…

"Rose!" Bella said, kissing her sister in law on the cheek. Rosalie and Bella had never been quite as close in their teenage years as all the other members of their little makeshift family, but adulthood and the birth of Bella's daughter had brought them closer together, and although they would never, either of them, see each other as they saw Alice, they had grown into an awkward but strong friendship. Edward came out of the kitchen, smiling widely at them, wearing an apron. Emmett raised his eyebrows.

"Change of career plan?"

Edward rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Mom decided it was my turn to help with the cooking." He laughed, "Good to see you guys."

"Well, it doesn't hurt you to help once in a while." Bella said, and something in her tone made Emmett spin to face her. But her face betrayed nothing, and he moved quickly, fluidly, into hoisting Renesmee onto his back.

"You coming with me to see Grandma, squirt?" he asked, voice laughing, but Rosalie read a flash of concern in his eyes.

Renesmee nodded solemnly and Emmett trekked through into Esme's wonderful, gigantic kitchen, Rosalie trailing behind. Esme was by the stove as always, apron on to match her younger son's and chocolate hair tied behind her head, now sporting the odd thread of grey, but nothing hardly noticeable. She turned and smiled as Emmett slid Nessie down his back and wrapped his mother in a huge bear hug. She laughed a little, her grin widening as she hugged Rosalie.

"How's the new apartment, then?"

"I love it." Rosalie said, before Emmett could get a word in edgeways. "It's beautiful, and everything's nearly all in place…" she looked up at her husband and echoed, "It's beautiful…"

Esme smiled at the pair of them. She remembered how she had been when she had first moved in with Carlisle, into a tiny townhouse in the middle of Forks, and how beautiful even that had seemed then. Of all her children, Emmett had been the one she had been most concerned about, as a young teenager, up until the day he brought Rosalie Hale home. She… just hadn't been able to see him finding anyone and ending up happy, he was so _content _anyway, uncomplaining, that she hadn't been able to imagine anyone who would _fit. _Someone good enough. But she conceded now, he had found his perfect match in the beautiful, broken girl, and from the moment they met, for almost eight years now, they had hardly been apart.

"Alice and Jasper will be here soon, he had a late shift to work and Alice was just closing up the Practice." Carlisle said, walking into the kitchen, smiling. Time had been kind to the patriarch of the Cullen family, his blonde hair only silvering in places and he face still relatively unlined and smooth.

Alice, working as a massage therapist in the Practice whilst she took night classes in fashion and design, had helped Carlisle, near enough from the start. Having decided, as Jasper had remained in Forks, in the police force, not to go away to college, she had started working there almost immediately after Carlisle opened it, specialising in massage, aromatherapy and herbal medicines. She looked the part too, gliding through the place in floaty little dresses with her hair still as spiky and bizarre as ever, and her low, soothing voice.

Jasper had worked his way through the ranks in Forks Police Department very quickly, under the watchful eye of Charlie Swan, proving an efficient and talented officer, due to his calm and quick-thinking demeanour. He had recently taken the position of detective, Forks being such a small town he was able to dabble still in all sorts of police work, whilst holding a position in the department second only to Bella's father. He had recently proposed to Alice, and although everyone had seen it coming, the first thing Emmett said as the pair of them came stumbling through the door out of the sudden Washington rain was: "Check out Alice's rock!"

It was beautiful, and quirky, to match its grateful, loving recipient. A four pointed star shaped dark sapphire, set into a white gold band, Jasper had enlisted both Esme and Rosalie's help in choosing it. And it was perfect. Alice blushed slightly as Emmett yanked her through their childhood home by the arm to show his mother and Nessie.

* * *

Later, sitting around the big oak table like they always had, Emmett smiled. Everyone he loved most, from those he had known since as long as he could remember, to Rosalie, the one person he knew he couldn't live without, to little Nessie, the newest and yet most treasured addition to the Cullen clan. He watched Jasper and Alice smile sweetly at each other as they twirled their spaghetti, his niece take a sip from her cherryade, grinning as if it was wine. His eyes moved to his parents, sitting quietly side by side, listening to Edward's talk of his internship, not saying a word, not even touching, but somehow emanating closeness. And when his eyes turned to Rosalie, laughing lightly, he remembered a vow he had once made to himself with regard to her laugh, and realised he was well on the way to keeping it.

**A/N: I would have liked to have got this up sooner, but life gets in the way :L Sorry this chapter was a bit filler-ish, but I was trying to set out where everyone in my lovely family is now :)**

**And just a word of warning – if you're a hardcore Edward&Bella fan, don't start getting angry with me. I'm gonna shake things up a bit, this is a pre-warning. And my lips are sealed as to how THAT ends.**

**Anyway, thought you'd all like to know I've got all of this fic planned out now :D which is impressive, even for me! It's 34 chapters plus an epilogue long, so it's gonna be another epic. And after that I'm probably going to be on hiatus for a while whilst I take all my AS exams, but I'll let you know nearer the time.**

**Hope you liked this chapter, I got almost 600 reviews for RBM, maybe you lot could try to better that on this one? :P**

**I value everything any of you ever have to say. I'll try and be more prompt with the next update.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

**(two years previously)**

"See you later, Cal…" he laughed, smacking his fist into his friend's shoulder, "Meet at the Rocky Road at eight?"

His friend nodded and turned down the corridor to his own flat. Emmett grinned as he fumbled for his key. It had been another long day, but he had just got an A on one of his final papers and tonight all he wanted to do was celebrate. With Rosalie, preferably, but he understood that her workload right now, juggling the doctorate with the remainder of her thesis on child psychology, was almost double his. He started humming a tune as he turned the key in the lock, burst through the door, dimples characterising his face, with a joking shout of, "Honey, I'm home!"

He was greeted by what at first he thought was silence, but when his ears adjusted to the lack of noise, he could hear something, a soft, desperate sound, coming from their bedroom.

"Rose? Babe, are you ok?" he called, tossing his folders onto their couch and walking through the kitchen into their bedroom, hurrying as he got no reply. He pushed the door open to find it dark in their small bedroom, and a shadowy figure curled in a ball on their bed, shaking slightly. The soft noise, he now realised, was crying.

"Rosalie?" his voice wavered slightly as he flicked the light switch and illuminated her face, so red-raw he knew she had been crying for hours. It had been forever – years – since he had seen her like that, and for a moment he froze, staring. He had never known a feeling of shock and empathy to cut so deep as when he looked at her in pain. He'd learnt that long ago.

"Rose, what's wrong?" he whispered, the moment of ice over, and rushed to her side, sitting on the edge of the bed next to her and pulling her up into his arms, into his lap, holding her so that they couldn't have been any closer. She clutched at his shirt, tears soaking through the thin cotton in minutes, nails digging into the skin of his back.

"Hey…. hey…" he whispered, stroking her hair and rocking slightly. "Rose… what is it?"

There was still silence for a moment as she held onto him, as if, and probably accurately, he was the only thing in her world.

She slowly pulled back, her eyes a brighter shade of violet in the bright, almost clinical light in their room, mixed with her tears.

"A…Alice just phoned me… Jasper's been… been in a shooting… he's in surgery…" she trailed off, choking on her words, fisting his shirt again. He pressed a kiss to her temple, his own heart thudding for the welfare of his friend, but knowing that not even for one second could he show her his fear. It was his job to be strong.

"It'll be all right, Rose…" he murmured, and was almost proud for a second of the false strength he managed to convey with his voice. She pulled back a little and wiped her eyes, shoulders still shaking.

"I… he might die, Emmett… I… I can't live with that…" she trailed off again, fear and despair flashing through her eyes like all hope had already been stripped away. He threaded his hands into her hair, fingers catching in the curls, matted with tears.

"You… you have to be strong, Rose… he's gonna make it…"

Inside, anger bubbled, because she knew there was no way Emmett could know that. She gripped his hand tightly, breathing growing more and more difficult.

"You…you know my parents… I… Jasper's my… my family… all I have left…"

Her words almost hurt, but he would never show it. That still, after nearly six years, she didn't see him as a constant, he wasn't yet her family. But he also knew her well enough to know that although everything had changed, everything was better now, she was, and always would be… _warier _than other people. Unsure. And although he knew she trusted him explicitly, he knew some part of her failed to register that she had him for forever. She needed some proof, something tangible, something _solid._

It was in that moment that it all formulated in his mind. It wasn't that he hadn't thought about it before, it wasn't that he hadn't dreamt that future for them both, but he'd never put reality to it, a time, a date, a solidity to it. He curled his fingers around hers and kissed her hair, feeling her heart against his and sensing the emotions rising inside, knowing what he wanted… what he needed to do.

"He's not your only family, Rose…" he whispered soothingly. "I'm here, shhhhh…"

She nodded weakly into his chest, but said nothing. The tears were still coming, he could feel them still soaking his shirt and his skin.

"I'm not going anywhere, Rosalie… ever…" he whispered, kissing her temple, pulling her face up to his. Part of him felt sick, he wished he could promise her that, but this thing with Jasper right now was just proving that no one could promise anything like that. People always die, people always leave. She held his gaze, her eyes swimming in violet tears, and shuddered.

"You… you can't say that…" she murmured, "I wish you could… but-"

He cut her off by pressing his lips desperately to hers, trying to throw her a lifeline in her time of drowning. She held herself up against him, but she put nothing into the kiss, simply holding on to the feel of him for long moments, until he drew back.

"L…let me be there forever, Rose." He whispered, his voice shaking, "Be with me forever."

For a moment there was silence as she stared at him, her eyes blank and cold, eyes that hadn't emerged in years, since an evening when he had found her, out in the forest, when no one else knew where to look. Tears overflowed from her eyes and ran silently down her cheeks, their paths unmarred. She stared at him, and his heart was racing, knowing his timing was terrible, his friend was in danger, maybe dying, but also knowing that this was _right. _He wanted to hold onto her forever, in desire, in love, and like this, in desolation.

Slowly, she reached a hand out to cup his face. "Emmett… was that a proposal?" she asked shakily, and he could read nothing from her voice. Honesty became not the best but the only policy, and he shrugged.

"I don't know… I really don't. If you want it to be… I just… I'm your family, too."

He trailed off, praying he hadn't ruined anything, praying for Jasper, that his friend would be allowed a further slice of forever, praying that Rosalie would be beside him in his.

She said nothing more, simply buried her head in his shoulder, pulling him closer still. Another kiss to the top of her head, another prayer. Finally, she spoke.

"I… I'll be with you forever." She whispered, "Always."

It wasn't how he'd imagined it, diamond rings and chardonnay and a trip to Rome. Her eyes didn't fill with joy as she looked down at him in the moonlight, and _yes _didn't escape her lips as little more than a sigh, before she caught him in a timeless embrace. But somehow, a vow of forever in their shabby little apartment when their worlds were crumbling… that meant more. It meant endurance, through everything, empathy, comfort. It meant he would hold her hand, help her survive. Be happy when she could, be content when she could, but when she couldn't, he would pull her through.

He held her close, and prayed.

* * *

Twenty minutes of silence preceded Alice's next phone call, saying that the surgery had been successful and Jasper was going to be fine, if a little weak for a month or two. Emmett settled an exhausted Rosalie into bed, and booked them a pair of flights for the next day, to go home to see him. When the pair of them rushed into his hospital room to see him and Alice, locked at the lips as usual, a weight was lifted. And Rosalie, of her own accord, reached out for Emmett's hand.

There was another proposal, with a diamond ring, and expensive clothes, and wine, - but no Rome. And there were eyes full of joy and endless kisses and moonlight. But it didn't mean as much, it didn't mean the same thing as a vow of love for forever in a moment when everything could have gone so wrong they would never have recovered… nothing meant as much as that.

**A/N: Hope you liked this update :) Sorry I didn't get it to you sooner, I was at a friend's on Friday night because her little cousin is terminally ill and she really needed me, and I went to a 90th birthday party and a concert that my friends were in yesterday. This one (although she's unaware) goes out to my Mum, who's endlessly amazing and strong and I love her :D**

**Review, my darlings :P**

**x**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

A sound was breaking through her perfect peace, curled up on Emmett's bare chest in their new bed, the most expensive thing in their new apartment, a much belated wedding gift from Rosalie's parents, their daughter having decided to put their extensive wedding vouchers to one of the most upmarket furniture stores. An unwelcome, unfriendly sound.

"What the…" Emmett started, snuggling deeper into his pillow and tugging her closer, but the sound was still shrill in her ears. She shrugged out of his arms and sat up; trying to figure out what the hell was interrupting her blissful oblivious sleep.

Then it clicked.

The alarm clock.

Cursing, she slammed her fist down on the top of it to shut it up and levered herself out of bed. Emmett groaned a little and rolled over, making a small smile touch her lips.

"You've gotta get up, honey." She murmured, leaning over to kiss his jawbone lightly, wrinkling her nose as his morning stubble chafed her skin. He shook his head stubbornly, mouth fixed into a set frown that was almost comical, and rolled over to face the wall. She laughed lightly, and stood up, yanking the blankets with her as she did, leaving her husband completely naked. He muttered something rude under his breath that simply made her chuckle and she started to walk towards the bathroom.

"It's our first day of work; you can't get out of it. Now, if you'd like to join me in the shower…"

* * *

The Practice, as it was still temporarily named, was in a nice street, a tall building with a perfect place for letters detailing the name of the place on the side wall, the bricks a nice brown-red. It looked inviting, and while it was still getting on it's feet right now, with the grants from various funders and a whole team of marketing consultants working round the clock to get the name out there – which was harder than you would have through, without an official title yet, it seemed to be attracting a fair few people, many referrals from the local Seattle hospitals and more specialist cases from Forks General, even. Although Carlisle had been teasing about placing Rosalie and Emmett there when they qualified, the proposal had only become real fairly recently, but neither of the pair of them were naïve – they realised that an opportunity to be part of a place like this wouldn't come up every day, and as newly graduated professional they couldn't hope for a better offer.

Alice met them at the door when they entered, smiling sweetly and professionally, but they both knew her well enough to read the excitement, near to bursting from her eyes. She led them through to the reception area, and although they had both been there a million and one times, insisted on showing them to their new offices. Emmett's was at the back, with an adjoining exercise therapy room, complete with treadmill and practice bike. Rosalie's was near to the elevator, and from the moment she stepped into it she realised it had changed since she'd last seen it – it had some _Alice_finishing touches all around… the big black leather couch being the first, with the quirky lime green cushions, and the matching lime green blinds, and the cream fluffy rug… Rosalie made a mental note to tone it all down a little, gradually, so as not to offend her new sister-in-law.

"My office is nicer than yours." Emmett taunted playfully when Alice had finally left the room, announcing consulting hours started in ten minutes, and that she would be down the hall if they needed her. He stepped up behind his wife and wrapped his arms loosely around her waist, leaning into her and catching a whiff of the perfume that made him wish they were still in the shower. She leant back into him, letting a smile wash over her face, but he could feel every muscle in her body tensed into place, he could feel that she was feeling vulnerable.

"Nervous?" he asked casually, and she sighed and nodded, revelling in the feeling of his hard chest and abdomen against her back, his breath light as a whisper on her neck, his hands clasped just above her navel. She wondered, briefly, if it would ever stop being like this. She knew about honeymoon periods and newlywed bliss and other such bleak ideals, that this wouldn't last, but somehow she couldn't even begin to imagine that her heart would not race every time he walked into the room, that she wouldn't adore the feeling of him holding her, that every moment she wouldn't be crying out to taste him, to touch him, to belong to him.

And it had been eight years.

She shrugged gently, and turned and smiled at him. "You should go make sure you can work that bike, and I should make sure I can work the computer…" she said, kissing him lightly. "Good luck."

He turned to leave, and as he had done every morning before they went their separate ways to class through every year of college, he dipped her slightly, quickly, and kissed her firmly, before darting away without another word. She put her hand up to her mouth, her lips still tingling.

No, she was certain it would never go away.

* * *

The day seemed to blur into one. Rosalie saw more patients that she'd expected, but it was a comfortable few – but that was the intention of the Practice. That they would have a few patients, and they could devote more time and attention to them. It was as she was walking through the Practice between patients to grab a coffee that she noticed her, walking through the lobby. A tall woman with light brown curly hair, her eyes duller than they had once been and her face more tired, but there was something about her that Rosalie recognised instantly and it only took her a few seconds to work it out… it was Jessica Stanley, who had been in Alice, Bella and Edward's class in high school, and who had had that fateful party…

She shook herself a little. Not dwelling on memories had become a very strong part of her ever since she'd finally told Emmett her story. Jessica Stanley had a tiny baby in a blue jumpsuit tucked into the crook of one arm, and her other hands was grasping desperately at the toddler reins of another little boy, who was trying his best to break his mother's grasp, testing the boundaries of her control. Jessica looked exhausted, that was the first and only word Rosalie could find to describe her, and the boys looked like more than a handful, hell, more than two handfuls, but something inside Rosalie shifted.

It wasn't like she was with Renesmee, doting favourite Aunt, smiling and playing, but never chastising. Rosalie saw something in Jessica's eyes, something beyond the weariness, the forced smile, the messy hair and clothes stained with this morning's baby food. She saw something that she hadn't even known she was missing.

"Rosalie Cullen, right?" Jessica said, having walked up to her, juggling baby and toddler in her two hands, grimacing slightly, looking as if she had forgotten she was even frowning. Rosalie nodded, started to hold out her hand to shake and then realised Jessica had hers full.

"Jessica Stanley?"

Jessica gave a small smile. "Jessica Newton, now, actually. I… I haven't seen you since you graduated Forks High… but I heard from Bella that you married Edward's brother…"

Rosalie nodded. She'd never liked the girl, Jessica had been mildly irritating, a gossip and a hypocrite in high school, but that girl was nowhere to be seen now. Everything that had once characterised her, albeit in a bad way, had been ripped away, and she was only one thing now.

_Mother._

"And who's this then?" Rosalie bent down to look the oldest little boy in the face. He looked at her inquisitively for a moment, and then gave her a small smile.

"Say hello, Ethan." Jessica said, a smile breaking out on her face slowly. "This is my eldest, Ethan, and this little fellow here is Tobey." She gestured to the sleeping baby. "I'm here to see Dr Giles for Tobey's jabs?"

Rosalie nodded, and gestured towards the pediatrics waiting room, smiling at Jessica and little Ethan as they passed.

"Nice to see you, anyway."

"And you." It was clipped, impersonal, like they had both realised they had never known each other at all.

But after moments, when Jessica was out of sight, Rosalie sat down, finding her heart inexplicably thumping. Well, maybe not inexplicably… something was stirring.

_Children. Babies. _It wasn't even a thought she'd ever had, it wasn't anything she'd even begun to consider. A long time ago something had happened to her, and ever since she'd been healing, but she was still too afraid to think too far into the future, knowing how wrong everything could go. She was still living in the moment, living in the now, because the future… the future never seemed to live up to anyone's expectations. Considering, now, she realised that her engagement to Emmett and subsequent marriage were more than she ever could have hoped for, but somehow, she still couldn't bring herself to even begin to envisage where they would be in five years, in ten… And babies brought her close to thinking about the future, so they had never crossed her mind before. But all of a sudden, she was jealous of a girl she'd hardly known, she still hardly knew. Bitterly jealous. It was like a switch had been flicked, and she suddenly knew what she wanted.

She took a deep breath. She had definitely changed.

**A/N: Sorry it took so long, I don't think I'm gonna be able to update this one as quickly as I updated RBM, but I am going to do my best to get three-four updates up a week!! AND I had huge writer's block on this chap, so let me know how it turned out…**

**xx**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

There was a knocking on their door as they were finishing the Mac & Cheese Emmett had cooked. Wordlessly, but with a small frown on her face, Rosalie walked down the hall and answered the door. Standing in the doorway was Edward, but not looking his usual self, exactly. Copper hair was dishevelled and slightly greasy, face even paler than usual and slightly bloodshot. Rosalie sniffed and the unfriendly smell of whiskey hit her, but one glance at Edward and she could see that he was still at least aware of himself. Her frown deepened.

"You look rough." She commented, leaning into the doorframe. Emmett had cooked tonight, the end of their first week of work, she'd relaxed, and she'd been planning on piling the dishes in the sink and going to bed early with her husband… she didn't exactly want Edward in the house, Edward who had always been her least favourite Cullen, and although being part of the same family she _loved _him, he irritated her, and right now his timing was… impeccable.

"We can't all look flawless all the time." He muttered. "Let me in."

She stepped away from the door and he stomped through. The fact that he was still in surgical scrubs, albeit clean ones, and a leather jacket, with evening stubble casting a shadow over his otherwise sheet-pale face made him look all the more run-down. Still, Rosalie was annoyed.

"It wouldn't hurt to be polite to ladies." She commented sardonically, shutting the door behind him and rolling her eyes.

"Good thing you're not a lady, then." He retorted, his face still set into a grumpy frown, but Rosalie laughed lightly.

"Oh, lighten up a bit, Edward…" she muttered, "Would you like a coffee?"

Edward nodded gruffly as they walked through into the kitchen. Emmett looked up in surprise as he saw his brother there; Edward sank into Rosalie's chair without a word. She raised her eyebrows at her husband, but when she got no response, she turned away to make the coffee.

"So… any reason for you gracing us with your presence, man?" Emmett asked lightly, but he knew something was amiss. Edward ought to be at home with Bella and Nessie at this time on a Friday night, yet here he was, looking terrible, grunting out answers to questions and with his face set in a permanent frown.

"Just thought I'd drop by."

"Bullshit, Edward. What's up?"

Rosalie smiled to herself as Emmett got straight down to the crux of the matter, openly attacking his brother for answers. She heard Edward sigh.

"Things… things between Bella and I aren't going too well…"

There was silence for a moment, neither Rosalie nor Emmett wanting to point out that they had noticed that in a couple of seconds at the family dinner on Sunday.

"Uh huh?" Emmett managed, forcing a neutral tone. Both of them liked Bella, neither wanted to be seen to automatically take Edward's side… Emmett knew first hand his brother could be temperamental… it came from being passionate. He wasn't unlike Rosalie in that way…

"I… uh… she's not at home much anymore, we've got her friend Angela's little sister making a mint from all the babysitting… and Nessie's always talking about where she went with Mum and Dad, and where she went with Alice and Jasper… Bella… Bella seems to be out all the time, and I don't know where she's going… so… so one night I followed her…"

Rosalie's jaw dropped. She hadn't thought it would be this bad, maybe an argument over where Nessie would go to school in the fall or something, but nothing like this…

"… she went down the reservation, to that Jacob Black's house. He was… he was her best friend, besides Alice, especially in that last year of high school… and I always thought he had a thing for her… never really liked him and he never really liked me…"

"Isn't he married though, now?" Emmett added, trying to feed a voice of reason into the conversation as his brother got steadily more and more overwhelmed.

"To Leah Clearwater." Rose piped up, setting the coffee mugs for the three of them down on the table and taking her seat. "They only recently moved back down here. Leah works in the sandwich bar just down from the Practice, Emm…"

Edward scowled. "That's not the point. She was in there for hours before she headed home… and it's not just occasionally… it's almost every night of the week now…"

"But you've only followed her once? It couldn't just be a one time thing?" Rosalie asked. Edward looked at her with venom in his eyes – and with something similar to a snarl replied: "I'm not stupid, Rose. She's going somewhere… where else would it be?"

Rosalie shrugged, not phased by her brother-in-law resentful tone, "I'm just saying, you shouldn't jump to conclusions… there could be a perfectly acceptable reason for this…"

"Not everyone's marriage is all sunshine and fields of daisies!" Edward snapped. "People lie, as hard as that must be for you two to believe…"

Emmett started to retort, but Rosalie shook her head. Edward looked down into his coffee.

"I think she's having an affair, Emmett. I… I've been out working long hours trying to complete my internship and Nessie's not such a Mommy's girl anymore and…" he took a deep breath, "We don't seem to _click _like we used to. It's like… every time we're together… Jacob's with us too…"

"Edward…" Rosalie started, because she knew Bella, she knew what she was like, and this Jacob thing, this _affair, _it didn't add up. But Edward cut her off.

"Stop it." He muttered. "I know I'm probably making it all up, and I know it's stupid and I know I've got to think of Nessie, put her first… but I just… I…"

He took a deep breath and looked between them. "Something's not right… I can feel it. And then I just freeze up. I work all hours, I can't stand being at home… everything's changed…"

Emmett nodded slowly. "You know what I'm going to say, don't you, Ed? You need to talk to Bella. There's no point thinking all these things and telling us about them, if she's got the perfect explanation…"  
His brother nodded grimly, but neither agreed nor disagreed. Then he drained his coffee cup and got up from the table.

"I'd better get home." He said, and his voice was hard and cold, and Emmett was thrown back into the moment when Edward had crept into his room, way back in high school, and told him they feared Bella was pregnant. Only for a second, because reality caught up with him and he saw his brother, his almost fully qualified doctor brother with the tortured eyes standing before him, and nothing was as simple as then.

"Edward, you need to-" Rosalie started.

"Please don't say anything about this to anyone." Edward said, and he seemed unable to look them in the eyes. "I'll talk to Bella about it in my own time."

Emmett nodded slowly. Both of them could tell by Edward's tone and the look in his eyes that he had no intention of saying anything to Bella anytime soon. Emmett, who had known Edward all his life, knew that his brother was a bottler, keeping everything inside, growing more and more grave and despondent, and presenting a rough, irritable exterior to anyone who tried to care. But he knew that it was not his place to argue, so when Rosalie started to say something he grasped her hand, silencing her.

Edward left through the front door, nothing solved.

* * *

Rosalie's plan for an evening in bed were somewhat dampened by Edward's speculation, but as they lay in bed, Rosalie watching the bright blue LED lights on the alarm clock turning from 10:19 to 10:20 and then on, whilst they lay in silence, she considered. If she thought about it, and went with her gut, then she didn't think Bella would do that. But Edward… Edward wasn't melodramatic, and he didn't read too much into things, and those sounded like legitimate concerns… and they had both seemed off at the meal at the weekend…

She just wished they could all go back to the way they were at the very end of high school, that summer that she, Emmett and Jasper graduated. Before anyone moved away and changed, before anyone had gotten jobs that nearly got them killed, before anyone had had a daughter and married early and fallen apart…

"Thinking about Edward and Bella?" Emmett asked, threading a finger through a blonde ringlet and sighing. She nodded, and rolled onto her side, splaying her fingers across his bare chest.

"Thinking about everyone." She whispered, and he pressed a light kiss to her forehead.

"They'll sort it out, Rosalie. They're _Edward and Bella, _for crying out loud. I… I've never seen anyone love each other so much. Except maybe you and me…"

"Except maybe you and me…" she echoed, grinning, burying her face in his warm, soft skin.

"Don't you worry about it." He whispered, "You and I are gonna have a relaxing weekend, and then put the world to rights again next week…"

"Sure…" she muttered, kissing his skin.

"Still thinking about them?" he asked after a few minutes. She shook her head, and that was true.

She was thinking about Jessica Stanley, and babies.

**A/N: A bit quicker, and a bit longer this time round!**

**Disclaimer: Nobody bite my head off, you need to understand I AM AN EDWARD & BELLA FAN AS MUCH AS YOU!!!!!**

**I think this is gonna turn out a lot more family based than RBM, but it's because of the stage in their life that Rosalie & Emmett are at. They're gonna need a lot of support from the Cullen clan :D**

**Hope you like, review please :)**

**xxx**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

It was a Saturday, so everything should have been quiet, dark and soft, at that time of the morning. But something was seeping through the perfection, as Rosalie traced sleepy circles through her husband's hair with her pinky finger, something almost as foreign and unwanted as the alarm clock…

"Rose, is that your flipping phone?" Emmett mumbled, and she felt his chest move slowly under her head.

_Yes, that was it._

Muttering words that would have made Esme pale, she slid out of bed and started rummaging around on the floor in her handbag, which had been quickly discarded the previous night along with every item of her clothing, for the offending phone.

She and Emmett had been out in Port Angeles the night before, to celebrate the end of their first month in the Practice, and he had taken her to the restaurant where they had spent their first Valentines Day. She had smiled and laughed and shared spaghetti and for a while she had forgotten about the things that had been playing on her mind for the past few weeks – the unspeakable, sudden obsession with children, and Edward and Bella. After that first night of discussion, she and Emmett had hardly spoken about it, and they had hardly seen the troubled couple, having been drowning in work, even at weekends. But from a couple of hurried, frustrated phone conversations Emmett had had with Edward, it had become clear that he hadn't even considered speaking to Bella about it yet. Right now, however, there was nothing they could do about it. It was a constant plague on the back of their minds, but they hardly spoke a word of it, even to each other.

"Jeez, turn it off, would you?" Emmett grumbled and rolled over to face the wall, curling up into a ball. Rosalie gave a half-chuckle, finally locating the ringing, vibrating cell phone. The caller ID showed a picture of the top of Alice's head, taken one night down in one of the pubs in Forks. She pressed the right button and put the phone to her ear.

"Alice?"

"Hiya, Rose, I-"

"Alice, it's-" she checked the light display on the clock through the morning grey, "-eight o'clock on a Saturday morning. Can't I get a lie in?"

There was silence from the other end, and then Alice's voice, in a hideous know-it-all tone that made Rosalie groan.

"You forgot, didn't you?"

"Forgot what?" she replied, but a feeling of foreboding was already creeping through her insides.

Alice tutted on the other end, but when she spoke her voice was full of amusement. "Rosalie Cullen, you have to be in Port Angeles in one hour, at Betsy's Bridal Boudoir."

_The dress fitting._

There it was, what she had carelessly neglected to remember throughout her frantic weeks of work. She started to groan, but then remembered Alice, dutifully early to the shop where she bought her wedding gown, smiling and already with five dresses prepared that she thought Rosalie would suit. Bella had been less enthusiastic, as had her final bridesmaid, Annabelle Waltham, who she had formed a fast friendship with, strange and shaky, but somehow fulfilling. Annabelle, whose sister had died at the hands of the man who had ruined Rosalie's life – and she had once thought irrevocably. She shook off that thought, reminding herself of Alice's devotion and most of all of her beautiful speech as Maid of Honour.

"I'll be there, Alice, don't worry. We're going to find you the most beautiful dress-"

"You don't have to appease me, Rosalie, I forgive you." Alice interrupted, and Rosalie could just about hear her brother's light laughter in the background. She smiled.

"I'll see you there, Alice."

"See you. Don't be late!" Alice sung into the phone, and then the dialling tone sounded, and it was still a little early for sounds that loud. Rosalie tossed the phone aside and stood up, groaning slightly as her head spun a little, feeling the effects of the wine the night before.

"Come back to bed, babe…" Emmett murmured from the fetal position he was curled up in. Rosalie laughed, sat on the edge of the bed and kissed the top of his curled hair. She wrinkled her nose.

"You smell like beer." She grumbled, kissing his cheek. "I have to go. Try on bridesmaids dresses with your sister." She smiled. "I'll see you later."

"Mbye…" he mumbled, and as his words descended into indiscernability she realised he was more asleep than she'd thought, and tucked the covers around his chin, laughing to herself.

"Love you." She whispered, as she walked into the dressing room.

* * *

She was only five minutes late, and as Bella and Nessie were fifteen, Alice couldn't complain. And being Alice, she wouldn't dream of it, she was simply bursting with excitement. Rosalie couldn't help smiling when she saw her little sister-in-law practically dancing around the shop, hardly able to decide which dress to try on first – Alice's happiness always seemed to have the quality of contagion. Bella, on the other hand, was radiating misery. Although she never liked dress-fittings, hell, it had been hard to drag her to her own, she had been just-pregnant and hormonal to boot, and although she was showing a smiling exterior every time Alice threw back the curtain and walked out in yet another beautiful and hideously expensive dress, Rosalie could tell something was up.

She was slightly paler than usual, and she couldn't seem to stop biting her nails, and chastising her daughter for making even the slightest movement out of line. Renesmee, who had always astounded Rosalie as being docile and fairly tough too, which she guessed was a Cullen trait, hardly noticed her mother's terrible mood and continued playing with the tiara display – in little girl heaven. When Alice and Esme went out the back of the shop with the owner for five minutes, and Rosalie was sure Renesmee was engrossed in looking at the sparkly shoes display, she turned to her.

"Bella, what's going on?" she asked gently, alarm bells ringing in her head as she thought of the conversation she had had with Edward a few weeks previously. It had been so much easier to pretend Edward had been reading far too much into things when she hadn't seen the consequent state his wife was in. The only positive in that moment was that it seemed to be having little effect on Nessie.

Bella stared at Rosalie for a moment. The two of them had never made a habit of having deep discussions – Alice and Bella were close like that, and Rosalie seemed to have found more of a confidante in Esme (she reckoned she was probably the only person in the world to truly adore their mother-in-law), but the pair of them rarely connected in that way.

"Nothing." She said simply, and her voice was almost – _bored. _Like she was done with pretending exactly that.

"You sure?" Rosalie probed, feeling the aftershocks of the bizarre clarity of all this. "You don't seem… happy?"

Bella shook her head briskly. "I'm just tired, is all." She said, not meeting her sister-in-law's eyes. "It's honestly nothing."

Rosalie had never been more convinced that it was _something._

* * *

She didn't get home until that evening, stumbling through the door, with a beautiful midnight blue dress in a dress bag draped over her shoulder, a box with silver shoes in under the other, and a bag full of the other necessities just slipping from the tips of her fingers. She collapsed inside the doorway, draping everything over the nearest chair and sinking into one. There was a note on the table in front of her, in Emmett's barely legible scrawl.

HAVE GONE TO HAVE A DRINK WITH JASPER AND ED. WILL BE BACK TEN-ISH, NOT LATE. THERE'S PASTA IN THE REFRIDGERATOR. LOVE YOU

XXX

She sighed, wishing Emmett was here to share her continuing worries about his brother and his wife, but also glad he had gone out with his brother and hers, knowing that maybe they would get something out of Edward that way. Then she shook herself. She'd become obsessed with this sordid thing. That needed to stop, immediately.

There was a scrawly PS at the bottom of the note, that only because she had known him so long and so well could she read:

HOPE YOU LIKE THE PHOTO DISPLAY. LOOK UP.

And she did. Emmett had decorated the wall ahead of her with photos of the six of them, with Esme and Carlisle in a few, spanning the eight years they'd known each other. Pictures from that first Valentine's Day, that first Christmas, Emmett's birthday, graduation, their first months at college, their wedding…

But it was the two photos at the bottom that caught her eye today. Bella, looking, although slightly tired, absolutely radiant in her simple white wedding dress, her hair curled and perfect, her eyes wide and slightly overwhelmed, flanked by her two bridesmaids in their dark purple dresses, and the picture of the six of them at that same wedding, Bella and Edward in the middle, Nessie invisible yet still between them, with their friends and family on either side.

She swallowed, and tore the note from her husband down the middle, and then into four, and then into eight, feeling the need to take her frustration out on something. She grimaced.

_She didn't. Like. Change._

Not when it was like this.

**A/N: Please, all of you, stick with me, this Bella Edward thing does have a purpose and I need you all to trust me :)**

**I promise happy endings, I really do.**

**Hope you liked this chapter, I am trying to get across with this thing the strong bond that they have as a group, as a family, but also how things are changing as they are growing.**

**Don't shoot me :S**

**xxx**


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

They were in Emmett's car, an upgrade on the old Jeep, when Rosalie noticed.

"This is not the way home." She said, raising her eyebrows. It had been another long day at the Practice, she had been dealing with a patient who had been the victim of domestic violence for fourteen years, and she was now suffering from varying forms of PTSD and nervous breakdowns. It was patients like that that got to Rose, the ones who had suffered, just as she had, but somehow they were still stuck in the furious cycle of self-loathing and detest, the impossible circle she'd stared into the mirror and seen every day until she moved to Forks. They were the hardest, because she couldn't seem to _pity _them like she pitied other patients, somehow still positive victims of violent attacks, racism, miscarriages, infertility, bereavement; the list was endless. Somehow looking at the victims who stood there, half-drowning in their own self-loathing, that brought back a little something of herself in that time. She saw them as she had seen the girl in the mirror – weak and ineffectual, and she hated that. So the day had drained her, and all she wanted was to crash on the sofa with Emmett and some Thai food and fall asleep watching TV.

"We're going round to Edward's. Just for a while." He braced himself. Forks was a good drive away, and there was nothing he would rather do that take Rosalie home and just relax – he'd had an equally trying day, having to tell a young sprinter that her knee problems meant she would never be able to compete at a high level, crushing her sole dream from the age of eleven, and he had had to ride out the screaming and the shouting and the hating and the tears that followed. But, opposite to his wife, he thought something had to be done about this Edward and Bella thing. They couldn't go on like this.

Rosalie groaned, and ran her fingers roughly through her tousled hair. "Emmett, I thought we talked about this…" she said, and her tone was irritated and heavy with annoyance, and that irked him.

He shrugged lightly, not wanting an argument. "They just need to talk… I like Bella, Rose, I don't think she's done anything wrong… but they need to talk…"

She shook her head. "It's not our place to go over there and decide whether or not Bella's done anything wrong…"

"We should help them! Remember what they used to be like, always gazing into each other's eyes, always holding hands… they just need a little nudge back in the right direction…"

"But that's not for you to do, Emmett! They have to sort this out themselves…"

He ran his own fingers through his own hair, gritting his teeth. She was infuriating when she thought she knew she was right.

"You know what Edward's like, he's stubborn, when he gets an idea into his head.. what if he leaves?"

"And what if he doesn't? But what if when you force them into this confrontation it makes things worse…. You can't just go delving into other people's marriages, it doesn't work like that!"

"It's not just anyone! It's my brother! Wouldn't you do the same for Jasper?"

"It's not-"

"It is the same, Rosalie! Edward… Edward's not ever going to talk to Bella… I know him too well… they need some help…"

"Oh for Christ's sake…"

"He texted me today and told me Bella's been away all weekend and she won't tell him where she is…"

Rosalie heaved a sigh but said nothing. She turned her head abruptly and stared out of the window.

"Oh, so are you not talking to me now?" Emmett said, and his tone was quite different to anything she had heard before, it was snide and almost childlike.

There was silence in the car for a moment, and then Rosalie snorted, and burst into mildly hysterical laughter.

"What?" Emmett snapped, and she laughed for a moment more, and then fell silent.

"We don't ever argue." She said in a small voice, and he darted a glance at her from the wheel, and then had to tear his eyes away to look back to the road. Her face was sad, her eyes averted, and immediately he felt back.

"Everyone argues sometimes. We're not always going to agree."

She sighed, her shoulders heaving. "I still don't think we should interfere. But you should have told me about the text first."

Emmett sighed himself, his eyes flicking between her and the road again. "And I still think we should… I'm sorry, Rose, but I think my brother needs help."

She nodded. "Promise me we'll never argue over Bella and Edward again?" she whispered, "It seems such a pathetic reason to argue…"

He took one hand off the wheel to squeeze hers.

"I'm sorry, babe… I guess I just don't want Edward and Bella to… for them to…" he trailed off, but Rosalie understood. If those two, who had always seemed perfect, could somehow _break, _who was to say there was any hope for the pair of them? It was stupid thinking, they both knew that, but this sordid _thing _with Edward and Bella simply seemed to be proving to them that there was no such thing as forever…

* * *

Edward was sat at the kitchen table, pouring over his medical texts, and Rosalie remembered with a jolt that he was studying for his intern exam… and wished she'd been a little more sympathetic with the thought of helping him. Nessie was sat at the other end of the table, colouring something, swinging her legs against the table legs, making erratic, irregular dull thuds against the wood… Edward looked up dully as they walked through the door, and gave them a small, grateful smile. Nessie, in stark contrast, leapt up and threw herself into Rosalie's arms.

"Aunty Rose!!!" she squealed and Rosalie lifted her, almost effortlessly into the air and swung her round.

"You're getting too big for that, Ness…" Edward said, and his voice was cold and hard, like his eyes. Emmett shot Rosalie a look, and she hoisted the little girl onto her waist and grinned into her niece's face.

"Why don't we go up to your bedroom, Nessie?" Rosalie asked in a bright, sing-song voice which took Emmett out of the moment, for a second. She was so… radiant when she was with the little girl. She looked so… complete.

Renesmee nodded and Rosalie carried her out of the room. Emmett looked across as his brother.

"Edward, you're a mess." He said solemnly, and sat down at the kitchen table opposite him. His brother made a face, and then looked up at his older brother, something in his eyes Emmett couldn't quite place.

"I… I don't know what I'm going to do if she leaves, Emmett… she's everything to me, her and Renesmee, and I know it's been hard, these past few years, but I can't…"

Emmett clapped an open palm on his brother's shoulder. "You don't know that she's gonna leave, Edward… and if she did… you'd pull yourself together, for Nessie and for the rest of us… and everything would work out."

Edward put his head in his hands. "She's… I can't imagine being with anyone other than Bella, Emm…"

Emmett nodded. He understood that, and for a moment had a sudden unwarranted flashback of the day Rosalie had driven away down the driveway of the Cullens' Forks house, and although he'd only know her less than a year, and he had _known, _in that moment, that she was the one person he wanted to be with… there was no-one else who could ever mean to him what she did… he understood Edward entirely.

"You still think she's with Jacob Black?" Emmett asked.

Edward shrugged. "She must be, right? She told me she would be away all weekend as she left the house, didn't give me a chance to answer. I called her, and she spoke to Nessie, but when she spoke to me, when I asked her where she was, she wouldn't tell me, and-"

Emmett frowned. It didn't seem… right, somehow. It was sloppy, if she was having an affair then surely Bella would have at least tried to have been more discreet. It didn't fit.

"So ring Jacob Black's wife, and see." Emmett said, and the moment he said it he was shocked that those words came out of his mouth. But Edward's eyes had lit up a little, as if Emmett had had the best idea in forever. He lifted the phone, and scrolled through the numbers until he found it.

"Hello? Could I speak to Leah Black please? Oh…. This might seem strange, but… is your husband home?... oh, ok. Are you sure?" Emmett could hear an agitated voice on the other end. "Oh, ok, thank you… sorry for wasting your time… Bye."

He set the phone down on the table wordlessly, and then looked up.

"Jacob Black's at home with his wife and son."

He couldn't really place it, and he couldn't really explain why, because nothing was solved, not yet, but there was a weight off his chest. He'd never liked Jacob Black and his little gang of boys from the reservation, and they'd been funny friends for Bella. When everything had kicked off between him and Edward, Emmett and Rosalie had already been away at college so they hadn't seen the brunt of it, but he'd spoken to Alice on the phone. He knew what that Jacob was like.

It was at that moment that the front door of their little house opened, and a voice resonated through the hallway.

"I'm home!"

**A/N: Sorry it's late up again, have been so busy. But it's Easter break now, so you'll probably get quite regular updates for a while, at least :S**

**I think this chapter's weak, personally. I hope I'm not losing my mojo :(**

**Therefore I'm going straight into writing the next one with as much enthusiasm as I can muster… hope for something great!**

**x**


	8. Chapter 8

**

* * *

**

Chapter Eight

Bella walked into the kitchen, and for a moment Edward was thrown into surrealism. She had the hugest smile on her face, and her eyes were shining like mad. She smiled at him, took two steps towards her husband and kissed him square on the mouth. For a moment, Emmett simply stared, the cogs whirring in his mind, trying to find an answer. Rosalie walked into the room, Renesmee clutching at her hand.

"Mommy!" she squealed, and Bella swung her up into her arms, laughing. The three adults stood there, matching glazed expressions clouding six eyes. Bella looked between them.

"What?" she asked.

Edward stood up slowly. Emmett's fists clenched slightly, sensing his brother's anger.

"Don't I get an explanation, Bella? Where have you been all weekend?"

Bella's smile faded and she set her daughter down on the floor. Nessie shied away, started tugging on Rosalie's skirt. She ruffled her little niece's hair.

"Why don't you go and draw Uncle Emmett a picture, Ness?" Rosalie leant down and whispered, and the little girl cocked her head on one side, seemed to consider, and then ran upstairs.

"I was getting to that, Edward. It's supposed to be a surprise."

Edward's fists clenched to match his brother's. "This has gone on too long, Bella… you can't keep blowing me off with stupid excuses. Come clean. Who is he?"

Bella frowned. "What?"

"Who is he, Bella?"

Rosalie and Emmett darted glances at each other in the same second, their eyes flickering with awkwardness. This wasn't a conversation they wanted to be watching, but neither seemed able to move. Rosalie was clinging to the thoughts and hopes of the past… the way they'd been at high school, at the weddings… the pictures from the display Emmett had made rushing through her head, digging her nails into her palm.

_This could be resolved. _She had to believe that.

Bella's eyes welled up with tears, and her jaw set. She didn't say a word, but pulled something out of her bag, a brown envelope, and shoved it in her husband's face.

"It was supposed to be a surprise." She repeated, sniffling, trying to fight the tears down. She looked between Emmett and Rosalie, too. "Did you think that of me, too?"

Neither of them moved, as Edward slowly opened the envelope and pulled out a pile of papers, the top one a thick cream piece of card. He scanned his eyes over it for a second and Rosalie and Emmett watched every muscle in him relax, the tension disappearing. Then his gaze flickered up to his wife, but he seemed unable to say anything.

Bella's tears were dripping off her chin, her eyes wide, as if she could not comprehend the misjudgement that had been made. Finally, she spoke, and her voice was stuttery, shaky, like it always was when she was scared.

"I… I wanted to make something of me… Nessie's getting older and you'll be qualified soon and I wanted to get somewhere myself… finish what I started before she was born… it was just night school, I made all the arrangements for her and everything, Edward… I don't know why I didn't tell you… I guess I just wanted to…" she trailed off, hanging her head, "But what the hell were you thinking, Edward?"

Emmett took the sheet of card out of Edward's still hands silently, scanned his eyes over it and then looked up at Bella, face bright with surprise.

"You finished your degree in fertility science? Bells, that's amazing!"

Bella couldn't even force a smile onto her face.

"Well done!" Rosalie stepped over to her half-friend, unsure whether or not anything she could say would or could make anything better. "That's… brilliant…" she trailed off herself, feeling how lame and weak the words sounded as they fell on the thick air. Bella looked up, but she had eyes only for Edward.

"It was a stupid idea, a stupid surprise… I just wanted to do something, for once, y'know… and you thought… you thought…"

Edward's eyes were haunted as the guilt and shock of the conclusions, the _false _conclusions he had drawn dawned upon him.

"I'm… I'm so sorry…" he murmured, taking the certificate back off Emmett. "I'm… I'm proud of you."

Bella glared at him, blinking furiously so the tears dashed down her cheeks and away. "Right now, I don't care." She said through gritted teeth, chocolate eyes fiery. "Right now, I can't even look at you."

And with that, she left the room, and they heard her angry footsteps on the stairs. Rosalie looked at Emmett, conveying with one glance that she shared his awkwardness. He looked at his brother, pityingly, but somehow angrily in the same look.

"Sort this out, Edward." He said simply, "We shouldn't have even come."

Rosalie nodded quietly, and whispered her goodbye to her brother-in-law. Then they left the house in silence, the only sound the echo of the front door as it slammed behind them.

"They'll sort it out, right?" Emmett turned to her, the moment they were both sat in the car. Rosalie laced her fingers through his, second nature.

"I hope so." She said, "At least everyone's being honest, now."

Emmett kissed her knuckles. "Sorry for fighting with you earlier." He whispered, "I love you."

She smiled, and leant in to touch their lips. "I know that." She said, "I've known that ever since… I dunno…" she trailed off, and a flush comes to her cheeks, and she looks down.

"Since?" his voice is light, his eyes bright, in the face of everything that just happened.

"Since you woke me up from my nightmare when I was staying at your house cos Jasper was in Argentina." She said, with a sad smile on her face, and he caught her lips again, once, twice, and started the engine.

They didn't need to say anything more, not on the journey home.

* * *

"Carlisle knew, I think."

They were sat on the sofa with Thai food cartons everywhere, Rosalie practically laid on Emmett, his fingers dancing lightly over her hair.

"Hmmm?"

"He asked me the other day how I'd feel about consulting alongside a new fertility specialist… and when I asked if he had anyone lined up he dodged the question… he knew… and he knew she'd passed…"  
Emmett sighed and pressed a kiss to her hair. "Probably. Edward hadn't told anyone else what he was thinking, there was no way Dad could have known."

Rosalie snuggled into him a bit closer, turning slightly so she could look up into his face, chocolate eyes meeting violet, sealing a deal of love and honesty once more.

"It scares me." She whispered, and he nodded, cupping her face with his left hand, the other still clasped in hers.

"It scares me, too." He replied.

"That they could… that _Edward and Bella _could finally find it so hard to be happy… it's stupid. It makes me think… it makes me think…"

"I know." He cut in, because he didn't want her to say it. He didn't want her to say that maybe if Edward and Bella couldn't be happy, maybe neither could they.

There was a long silence for a moment, and then he drew her higher into his arms, so she was laid on his chest, her mouth inches from his, before he closed that gap and drew her into a deep kiss, not desperate, as she had half expected, but loving, longing, contented.

"We're different." He said, running his little finger along her full red lips, drowning in the faded scent of her perfume.

"Hmmm?" she replied, eyes heavy lidded with near sleep – it had been a long, draining day.

"We… Edward and Bella had everything, straight away. They loved each other straight away, and everything was perfect for them… the whole way. Even Renesmee… she turned out wonderful…"

There was a moment where she almost brought up babies, but it passed before she had the courage.

"We… we had to fight for everything we had. We had to fight differences, and demons, and memories… We had nothing easy, and I think… I think that's why we'll endure."

She smiled in response, and kissed his jawbone lightly.

"I love you." She whispered, and although an unnecessary truth now, never needing to be voiced, it makes his heart swell a little.

**A/N: No author's note, off to watch the Apprentice!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

"Come on through, Mrs McNeill, take a seat." Rosalie ushered her patient through, onto the leather couch, the blinds half open, her smile wide.

"Thank you." The woman whispered, but her face was closed over, more than nervous – terrified. She sat on one end of the couch and Rosalie sat on the arm chair opposite, trying to give the woman an encouraging smile.

"Your previous therapist passed on your details, Gina. Can I call you Gina?" she asked; her voice was light and gentle. The woman nodded slowly. She wasn't young anymore, pushing sixty, Rosalie thought, but it was clear that she had once been beautiful. She had tight black curls, now threaded with strands of silver, and bright blue eyes, that although were haunted, threatened, vulnerable now, she could see that at one time they could have been enchanting, seductive.

"My name is Rosalie." She said gently. Another small nod from the woman, but no response. She sighed.

"Gina, I know it's difficult for you after all these years, having to talk about it to someone completely new, someone completely different, but Dr Barnes has retired to Florida now, and you've got me. I've got it all written down here – I know everything… but it would be easier to help you if you would tell me something… I don't need to know any details, I don't want to upset you, I just want to know how you're feeling… right now, today."

There was a moment of silence. Rosalie's heart was pounding. Despite all the degree certificates that stated she was an Honours student, they were all very well, but when it came to sitting in front of a broken person and trying to help them – she was inexperienced, vulnerable, and she had no honest idea whether she would really be any good at it.

"Today?" the woman whispered in a small voice, "I'm ok. Last night was better than some nights, worse than others. I think I got about five hours of sleep. I called my sister this morning; she invited me down to Mississippi for a week next month… I think I'll go…"

Rosalie gave another encouraging smile, her jaw beginning to ache. "That's good."

Gina McNeill raised her eyebrows slightly. "That's where you're wrong, Dr Cullen. I… I like seeing my sister, and her husband, but it makes me miserable."

She took a breath, as if she was going to say something more, but then the words fell silently on the air and she looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap.

"Why?" Rosalie probed gently. The woman's eyes met hers.

"I see her there, in that big house, with Michael and her daughters, and her grandchildren… and I… I'm so jealous… She was never like that, I was the motherly one, I half brought her up… she never wanted that… but she's got this huge family…"

Rosalie reached out and put a hand over Gina's shaking, clasped fingers. "It's all right to be jealous." She whispered, for a moment an image of Bella clasping Renesmee close flitting through her mind. "It's ok to want things you don't have."

Gina gave a weak, watery smile, and looked at her therapist.

"I… I… it's my fault, though, that I'm so jealous." She whispered. "It was fourteen, only fourteen… it's been forty-five years, and I… I've just wasted my life…"

Rosalie considered the bulging file, detailing monthly sessions with three different therapists for the past almost half-century, which she had glanced over for the final time just before she invited Gina McNeill into her room. The first entry, on slightly yellowing paper, curly handwriting detailing her first therapy session, from the old clinic in Seattle, a few condemning words:

RAPE VICTIM AT AGE 14. SUFFERING FROM SEVERE POST TRAUMATIC STRESS AND NERVOUS BREAKDOWNS.

Rosalie couldn't help the involuntary shudder, but she managed to conceal it. She looked at her patient, her mind whirring.

_She'd known it was coming to this… she'd known there'd be patients who hit slightly too close to home._

_Breathe, Rose, breathe._

And then she looked into Gina's eyes, her voice small but steady.

"What that man did to you, all those years ago, that wasn't right." She whispered, and something inside her cracked slightly. "That wasn't your fault. I know you've been told that a thousand times over, and it sounds empty, like it never means anything, but you have to believe that. _You _never did anything wrong. But…" she took a deep breath, "It won't ever go away, not completely. You've got a choice, Gina. You either let _him _eat up the whole of your life, you stay by yourself, you just… regret… or you push him away. You forget regret, you forget bitterness, you push the pain aside. Take it from someone who knows… it's the only way…"

"I… I've been _alone… _for forty-five years." The woman's eyes flickered down the gold wedding band on Rosalie's finger. "You won't ever have to endure that… and… it's draining. When you've got nothing else to think about… you can't help but think about it… I've been having nightmares about one night for most of my life… and my sister's been getting married… and having children… and having grandchildren…"

"You haven't been wasting that time, Gina… you've been working with disabled children for how long now? Thirty five years… that's… admirable." She squeezed her hand. "You've been doing good things all this time… and so maybe this wasn't what you saw, when you wee young, before everything happened to you. But it didn't make you a waste, Gina. Far from that."

Gina's smile widened a little.

"I just.. I just see my sister… and her kids and grandkids and I wish… I wish I hadn't been too afraid to have that.."

_I wish I hadn't been too afraid to have that…_

"I'll… I'll always regret not being able to have my own children… my sister… I can see how happy children make people… and I wasted than opportunity dwelling on the past…"

* * *

It wasn't like it would ever go away. The memories of that night, she doubted they would ever even fade. But she had Emmett now, and this makeshift, topsy turvy family – even when they were falling apart at the seams - to cling onto. Something fresh, something new, something beautiful. She had lazy mornings in bed with her husband, family dinners with Esme's delicious cooking, swinging Nessie through the air and watching her laugh; these were things she wouldn't have had had she not drawn a line under Royce King and everything that happened to her – everything that changed her.

Gina McNeill had none of that. She had spent her whole life shouting out in dreams without an Emmett to stroke her hair, crying alone, without anyone watching out for her, jumping at every shadow without anyone to turn on the light. It was close to heartbreaking, the thought that someone who had started out so similar to Rosalie could have so little, whilst she had so much.

She had never more than in that moment been more grateful for everything she had ended up with… her loving husband, her kind and understanding family, a fulfilling job. But what really stuck with her when she considered Gina's sad story was the one thing she regretted more than anything: not being able to have children.

That feeling again, deep in the pit of her stomach, and the thought of a little blonde baby with chocolate eyes, or a pair of tearaways chasing each other about Esme and Carlisle's garden, brown curls bouncing away…

If she kept putting it off, kept pushing away the dream, it would become just that – a dream. A beautiful, wonderful, amazing dream, but nothing more. She could see Emmett right now, dimples showing as he held a tiny baby in his arms… nothing made her heart swell more.

Things were about to get very different.

**A/N: A non Bella&Edward-y chapter for your enjoyment!!! Hope you're all still enjoying it. You might even get another chapter today if you're good – I'm too hungover to go out tonight, so I'm timewasting :)**

**Review, please :P**


	10. Chapter 10

****

Chapter Ten

They collapsed, side by side across the mattress, chests heaving, breathing shallow. There was calm for a moment, the sound of their gradually slowing breathing the only noise. Then Emmett snaked an arm around Rosalie's bare back and pulled her close to him, so she curled around and rested on his chest.

"Love you." He whispered, like he hadn't said it enough times in the past hour. But it brought a small smile to her face, and that made it worth it. She traced circles across the sculpted planes of his chest, her mind whirring.

"Emmett?"

"Yes, babe?" he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, taking care to inhale the scent of her shampoo – fruity and enticing.

"Can I run something by you?"

He frowned slightly, and then nodded.

Rosalie's heart suddenly thudded violently; he could feel it through her warm skin.

"Are you ok?" he whispered in a small, almost frightened voice, and she breathed out heavily, an echo of a small laugh.

"I'm fine." She whispered, kissing his skin, "More than fine. I… I wondered…. I wondered what you would think about having a baby…"

Silence, but only for a moment. Then she felt his hand on her bare stomach. "You're not?"

She shook her head, and it shouldn't have caused her such a pang as it did. "No." she whispered, her smile fading slightly. "But… I want to be…"

Again, another silence for her heart to thud and her pulse to race. He shifted so they were both propped up on their elbows, staring at each other intently. Emmett's eyes were unreadable for a moment, and she was scared in that instant that he didn't want the same things she wanted. Then his lips assaulted hers furiously, his hands threading into her hair. He pulled back after a few minutes, the pair of them breathless again, and now she could read everything in his eyes:

Complete joy.

* * *

**(six months previously)**

Alice was frantic, but what was to be expected? Rosalie was running five minutes late already, and her hair wasn't finished. Bella was perched on the dressing table in the corner of the room, fiddling with her nails, which were painted a beautiful dark scarlet to match the bridesmaid's dress she wore with such resent. Esme was almost as bad as her daughter, flitting around; making sure everything was _just so, _making endless calls to Edward, making sure that everything on the groom's side was under control, too. Poor Edward was probably just about ready to kill someone by now.

The stylist placed a final pin, and spun Rosalie around to look in the mirror. She looked, really _looked, _at her appearance, and for the first time in her life she was impressed by her beauty without resent. Ever since she had been to the prison and spoken to him a few months back, Royce and the memory of that awful night had tainted her life less and less. Today, she wasn't beautiful for herself, for anyone who might be watching, for anyone to see her as worthless, as nothing. She was beautiful solely for Emmett, and that in itself was glorious.

Renesmee, clutching the little posy of flowers Alice had made her, came skipping into the room.

"Aunty Rose!" she lisped, eyes wide with excitement, "Uncle Emmett's all ready, Daddy told me to come find the ladies!"

Rosalie smiled at the little girl's excitement – her lithe little form was beautifully clothed in a dark red dress also, and the flowers she held smelt sweet. She skipped over, and levered herself onto Rosalie's lap.

"Nessie, you'll crease Aunty Rose's dress!" Bella sighed, eyes bright and laughing from the other side of them dressing room. Nessie pouted slightly and slid off again, back onto the floor, lips fixed into a permanent, endearing little frown. Rosalie chuckled lightly, and stood up, letting Alice stand on her tiptoes to pull the thin white veil over her face. Then she turned to the three women and the little girl, her radiant smile masked by the thin fabric, but there all the same.

"I'm ready."

* * *

_Darling, wonderful Rosalie… _

_Beautiful, amazing Rosalie…_

_I love you, Rosalie…_

_Rosalie, the only woman I've ever loved._

Emmett groaned and dug his fingers into his scalp, massaging gently. Edward had made him send Renesmee along to hurry the women, when in reality Emmett was the one likely to be late. He'd had months, years even, to think this through, but where his vows were supposed to be there was simply a blank piece of paper.

Had he been anyone else, marrying any other girl in any other situation, he would have thought that maybe that meant something – meant that the wedding shouldn't go ahead, that they shouldn't be together. But as it was, as he was Emmett Cullen, and he was marrying Rosalie Hale, the girl he had loved through _everything _with his whole heart and soul ever since he'd first seen her, crying against a tree in the middle of Forks forest, alone and terrified and _broken, _he knew that he couldn't write anything down for totally different reasons.

In the end, he knew that he couldn't write anything because it was too beautiful to put into words.

* * *

"You haven't written anything, have you?" she hissed, as she stepped up beside him at the altar. He shook his head, looking down at his feet. He just… he couldn't voice it, word it, everything he wanted to say. Every time he tried it just came out – insignificant, insufficient. Not beautiful enough. He wished he had been able to – he wanted to make this day the most perfect day of Rosalie's life. He remember whispered conversations under the covers about her childhood dreams of a white wedding, that had vanished in the instant Royce took it all away from her – but since his haphazard, appalling proposal she'd been bright and cheerful about it, her eyes lighting up every time there was planning to be done or decisions to be made.

He expected her to be angry, hurt, annoyed at the very least, but he felt her hand slip in hers, fingers stroking his palm.

"S'ok." She murmured, "I couldn't write anything either."

And he squeezed her hand back. If he had needed another reminder of how _perfect _this all was, she'd provided it. A smile graced her face and as the minister spoke the words that had run through her head so many times and held so much meaning, this time she hardly caught them. She was too busy revelling in what could only be described as utter joy.

* * *

**Present Day**

He leant forward and kissed her on the nose. She smiled, and buried her head in his neck, breathing a sigh of relief. He gave a light chuckle.

"You really thought I wouldn't agree with you?" he breathed. She shrugged.

"Not really, I don't think." She whispered, "I… it's sort of crept up on me, Emmett, and now I want it so much… I'm afraid I'm not allowed to be this happy, and something's gonna go wrong…"

He kissed her hair, wrapped her closer in his arms. "It might not, y'know." He mused, "We might be allowed happiness, forever."

She laughed a little. "I doubt _forever._" She replied, "No one's that lucky."

"Oh, I beg to differ." Another kiss, then lots, trailing down the side of her face, his hands sliding into her hair, tracing for a few seconds the thin white scar just below her hairline, one of the last physical reminders of the broken girl she'd been when they'd met. She pulled his mouth to hers, wondering briefly for a moment it Emmett was right – if in finding each other they had found happiness forever, and this was just another step of the road… but she wasn't quite as optimistic as him, she knew things could end.

But for now, that only meant that she would revel in this moment all the more.

**A/N: FLUFFY CHAP!!! FINALLY. Hope you liked it, with the flashbacks to their wedding and everything – I thought it was time for some unadulterated fluff :)**

**Next chapter's Alice and Jasper's wedding, so that should be fun and games too :) Then there'll be some angst for a bit… then a bit of a twist, then some more angst, some more fluff… you know the drill. We've got a long way to go yet, folks, and as much as I would love to write 34 chapters of perfect fluff :D:D:D, it can't be all plain-sailing. Enjoy, and review.**

**xx**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

She felt him snake his arm around her waist and hold her close. It still astounded her sometimes that things like that – that had become so second nature to the pair of them – things like that could possibly make her heart race so fast and swell so far with happiness. She leant into him, smiling; the pair of them watching as Alice gingerly took Jasper's hand for their first dance as a married couple. Light strains of the saxophonist playing _Fly Me To The Moon _spread through the cool, pleasant evening air to their ears, and Rosalie thanked God that the Forks weather had stayed nice for her brother and new sister.

Alice, for all her crazed planning and obsession when it came to both Bella's and Rosalie's wedding, had chosen a simple and beautiful ceremony in the huge garden of the Cullen's Forks house, with a huge marquee and dancing to a softly-playing jazz band until all hours of the night. She looked… Rosalie was pleased to say, the most beautiful woman in the room, her short hair styled beautifully and with a white flower tucked just above and in front of her left ear, a white lily. The dress, which Alice had designed herself, was sublime; it was tight fitting, with a long train, in the purest of whites, strapless, with a bodice sequinned in white and pale gold. Around her neck she was wearing the same string of pearls that both Bella and Rosalie had worn at their weddings – the pearls Carlisle had bought for Esme for their wedding day, and the pearls that Renesmee would one day wear around her beautiful, pale neck, whenever she found someone to spend her life with.

And maybe, now, maybe if they had a girl, she would wear them too, or whoever (if it was a boy) their son married…

She shook herself, but couldn't help the smile spreading over her face. Emmett didn't fail to notice, and kissed her cheek.

"What you grinning about?"

She wrinkled her nose slightly and turned her head to him. "Our baby." She whispered. In the past two weeks they'd started trying – every opportunity they got. Emmett loved seeing Rosalie beam constantly, Rosalie loved that he wanted it as much as she did. It was perfect, for a while, their own slice of perfect.

He grinned and kissed her again. "It's wonderful, this, isn't it?" he whispered, gesturing around, to the beautiful decorations, the family sat around the table, Alice and Jasper dancing in the moonlight.

"Everything will change now, won't it?" she asked, and for a moment he felt a pang of pain – he'd only even been considering this for two weeks, but that sudden inkling that Rosalie had even had an ounce of doubt, that hurt. He wanted a child more than anything, all of a sudden, and he wasn't sure he could be let down on that. But when he looked back at his wife, he could see her glistening, joyful eyes, and knew she meant change in a good way.

"For the better." He murmured, just to clarify, and she nodded, and rested her head on his shoulder. It was one of those moments where both were thinking it, and neither needed to say anything. They didn't think it was possible to be any more in love.

Moments later, Emmett stood up and took Rosalie's hand, as Edward and Bella – dancing stiffly and not quite close enough, but dancing all the same – Carlisle and Esme and Rosalie's parents took to the floor to join the newlyweds. He wrapped his arms around her tightly. In the eight years since Rosalie had left her parents house on bad terms, some form of polite interaction had been salvaged, but that was all. Emmett couldn't see eye to eye with them, she couldn't see eye to eye with them – the one thing that hung over them constantly was that when she had been broken, before she'd had Emmett, when she had needed them most, they hadn't been there. So these days they had polite hellos and goodbyes, they'd come to Rosalie's wedding but not stayed long after the service – they were a little more keen to be at Jasper's, him having always been the favourite son and all, but he had made it perfectly clear that he did not appreciate the way they had behaved towards his sister, now and in the past, and he joined Rosalie with the clipped, false niceties and the hardly seeing each other.

Emmett drew her closer, swaying in time with the music, breathing in the scent of her hair.

"Do you think… y'know… there's a baby there already?" he whispered, one of his hands resting flat on her stomach between them. She shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant, but couldn't help the happiness bubbling inside her, and the thudding of her heart.

"Maybe." She whispered, "I guess… I guess I thought I'd feel it… but I don't know…" she smiled up at him, violet eyes gleaming, "I… I wouldn't really feel anything… so I guess there could be."

He stroked her stomach lightly through the satin of the deep blue dress.

"There could be." He echoed, "That's good enough for now."

With the moonlight shining down, they danced, until Rosalie tugged away.

"Come on." She whispered, "We've got a brother and sister to congratulate."

* * *

Emmett spun Alice across the floor, and then caught her, lifting his little sister up into his arms and into the air, making her squeal with delight, remembering when they used to play by the river when they both only reached Esme's waist. She was beaming like he had never seen her before, and while a few years ago there would have been a pang of regret, a pang of jealousy at losing his sister, at the thought of Rosalie at home, the whole of them still one big, beautiful family, he didn't mind at all.

"I'm proud of you." He whispered, and Alice smiled wider, if that was even possible.

"I'm proud of me, too." She whispered, and rested her head on his shoulder, "Emmett, does it ever stop being so perfect?"

He frowned for a moment. "You're gonna fight, Al, of course you will. And sometimes… sometimes it'll feel like you're losing your grip on it, if only just for a moment. But then… then I look at Rose, and you'll look at Jasper… and we know we'll love them forever, no matter what…" he smiled a bit too wide, and Alice narrowed her eyes.

"What aren't you letting on, Emmett Cullen?" she demanded, twirling again and then bring her eyes to his, frowning playfully.

"Rose and I… we're gonna try and have a baby…" he whispered, and clapped a hand over her mouth before she let out a squeal. "But don't tell anyone, not even Jasper, not yet. She wants to tell you all."

Alice's eyes widened in happiness, but she said nothing, putting a finger up to her lips.

"They're sealed, Emmett." She grinned, "Congratulations!"

He grinned. "I… you just get happier, Alice. That's what I've found… you can only get happier."

* * *

"Jasper… you take care of her, won't you?" Emmett asked in a hushed tone as he hugged his friend, Alice and Jasper about to leave for their honeymoon in Thailand. Jasper clapped a hand on Emmett's shoulder, and with a nod and a rough hug, they parted.

Alice threw her arms around him, after making tearful goodbyes to every other member of the family. "Emmett Cullen, I'm gonna miss you."

"Alice Hale-" he started, and then smiled, "That does sound good. Anyway, I love you. Have fun. _Be good. _See you soon."

She kissed his cheek and hugged him close once more. Across the drive, Rosalie pulled away from Jasper, tearfully too, and walked over to take her husband's hand.

"They're perfect for each other." Emmett whispered as the car accelerated down the drive, heading straight for the airport. "Almost as perfect as you and I."

**A/N: Again, author's note is minimal, because it's almost DOCTOR WHO time!!!! Woot woot!**

**xx**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

For a moment when she woke, Rosalie wasn't sure of where she was, the room her eyes had opened in not being the newly familiar bedroom they had created in their apartment. But the pale blue walls soon familiarised themselves in her mind – they were in Emmett's old bedroom at the Cullens' house. Her head was thudding a little bit too much, and she put that down to the one or two too many glasses of champagne they had toasted the bride and groom with the night before. She rolled over, to face Emmett, and immediately wrinkled her nose.

"Morning breath." She muttered, and her groaned as she shoved him away.

"I love you too, babe." He quipped, and she couldn't help laughing, a groggy, hung-over laugh. She ran her hands through her hair, which could do with a wash, the hairspray and the glitter from the bridesmaids' hairdo taking its toll. She kissed his cheek, holding her breath, and checked the clock on the wall.

"Shower time." She breathed in his ear, hoping _that thought _would awaken him. No such luck, he simply burrowed deeper under the covers. She gave him a small shove and slid out of bed herself.

"Ugh." She muttered as she stumbled across the room, tripping over hastily discarded shoes and clothes as she made her way out the door to the bathroom just along the hall. Bella was staggering out of it as she made her way in. She rolled her eyes at Rosalie.

"Couldn't you and Emmett have kept it down a bit last night?" Bella raised her eyebrows. Her tone was joking, but there was an undertone of bitterness in her voice. Rosalie's cheeks flushed, but Bella gave her a small smile. "There were children in the house."

Awkward moment having passed, Rosalie went into the bathroom and locked the door. She looked in the mirror, almost chuckling at her own appearance – she'd seen better days. Hair was tousled and sticking up at unthinkable angles, a result of both the hairspray and the previous night's activities, and her eye makeup, which had not been careful cleansed away as usual, was shadowing her eyes – making her look slightly haunted. Without making a sound, and trying not to think too hard, she put a hand on her stomach, flat for now, and considered. How long would it be before she knew? How long would it be before she felt something? Could there already be a little Emmett inside her right now?

She swallowed. As well as being the most beautiful thought in the world, it was the most terrifying. She thought of her own mother, who could probably win worst mother of the year without even trying, and for a moment the panic set in. What if she was that bad? What if, despite all her good intentions, all her beautiful dreams, when the baby was born, she couldn't be a good mother?

_Breathe, Rose, breathe._

She would look to Esme for an example, the perfect example, she decided. And she could see Emmett already with children tumbling all over him, laughing and tickling them. She'd manage. She had a family behind her full of love and compassion and _joy…_

She stepped into the shower, enjoying the steam rising around her, the feeling of _clean _washing away the stale taste and feel of the late night and the excessive champagne. That thought hit her with a pang, too. How long would it be before she wouldn't be drinking champagne for another nine months?? But that made her smile, not groan. She stepped out of the shower, wrapping one of Esme's warm pressed cream towels around her, breathing in the familiar scent of the Cullens' house… that without a doubt she had come to consider as _home._

* * *

They were sat around Esme and Carlisle's huge dining table eating lunch when Bella came rushing into the room, eyes wild, hair flyaway. They had been about to leave.

"Where the hell is Nessie?" she asked; her voice breathless. She was greeted by stunned expressions, and blank shrugs. Edward shot out of his chair, his eyes fiery and wild.

"What do you mean, where is Nessie?" he hissed, and Bella stared him out for a second.

"I… I don't know where she's gone." She whispered, "I called her, said we were leaving… I thought she was messing around… but she's not anywhere in the house…" Bella's voice was stuttery, terrified.

"But… she… she was with you…" Edward replied, panic coursing through his own voice. "How… how could you lose her… she's… she's gotta be somewhere, right?"

For a moment they stared, as if there was nothing else to do. Then Carlisle stood up.

"You're sure she's not in the house, Bella?" he asked, in a calm voice, but Emmett knew his father well enough by now to spot the clenched, worried fists, the darkening eyes, the set jaw. Bella shook her head, her eyes filling up with tears.

"I don't… I don't know why she would go anywhere…" she whispered, "She didn't want to go home but… she's never done anything like this before."

Esme put her arm around Bella. "It's ok. It's not your fault."

Edward bristled at that, but said nothing.

Emmett and Rosalie didn't need to say anything; they left the table, heading upstairs to search over the house again. Within the seconds, the usually calm and quiet place was ripe with shouts of the little girl's name.

"Nessie! Nessie!"

Rosalie walked into Esme and Carlisle's bedroom throwing every cupboard door wide open, every little space that a little girl could fold herself into.

"Nessie? Nessie, are you there? Your Mommy and Daddy are very worried about you… Nessie?"

But all the time the thoughts of panic were running through her head again. Bella was a brilliant mother. Bella could lose her daughter in one moment's loss of concentration… how the hell would she do?

"Any luck?" Emmett stood at the door, his face furrowed in worry. She shook her head, standing up from where she had been checking under the bed.

"I'm gonna take the Jeep down the road, see if she's wandered off… you coming?" he asked, and his voice was low and quiet, not unlike his father's in a crisis. For she knew him well enough to read his distress… he loved that little girl like his own, and if anything happened to her… She nodded quickly, and with a shout to the others as to what they were doing, they headed out of the front door and towards the Jeep. Rosalie slid into the front seat, running her fingers through her flyaway curls, and Emmett jumped into the drivers seat, only to spot something on the back seat.

Renesmee, dressed in her bridesmaid's dress from the night before, sat cross legged in the back of the Jeep, a smile plastered on her face.

"Nessie!" The both exclaimed, looking between the little girl and each other, trying to rationalise the impossible situation.

"Can we go now?" she said, smiling wider. Emmett frowned.  
"Go get Bella and Edward, Rose…" he turned in his seat to face the little girl as his wife left the car, running back for the house. "Go where, sweetie?"

She was frowning now, and her eyes filling with tears. "Don't let Aunty Rose get Mommy and Daddy… I don't wanna go home… I wanna go with you…"  
Emmett frowned, but said nothing as he lifted the little girl between the two seats and onto his lap. She buried her face in his chest.

"Why, Nessie?" he whispered, "What's wrong with home?"

She shook her little head, brown curls flying into his face, smelling of child's shampoo, and for an inappropriate second the thought of his own daughter flew through his mind… a hope, a wish, a dream.

"They… they… they fight all the time. They're… Daddy's always shouting… and… and… I wanna come with you… you and Aunty Rose… you never f..f..fight, you're always kissin' and stuff." She pouted and fisted his shirt on his shoulder. "I don't wanna go there anymore…"

Emmett's eyes widened slightly, but he simply held her close to him and rocked her until she stopped hiccupping. He looked out of the Jeep window to see Rosalie trailing behind Bella and Edward, running over to the Jeep. He got out, and let the little girl's parents bear down on her and lavish her with kisses and hugs and loving words, but when they looked up to meet his eyes he said one thing.

"It's gone too far. We all need to talk."

**A/N: Hope you liked it :) Happy Easter, everyone!!! No post yesterday because I was busy having Easter Sunday with my family. But here we go…**

**And I'm not gonna lie to you, we're headed into some serious angst territory very soon…**

**But stick with me. It'll turn out ok in the end.**

** Review.**


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen **

"I want Uncle Emm!" Nessie pouted, tugging Emmett after them as Bella stormed into the house, unwilling to participate in the confrontation with her husband. Emmett stumbled after them after giving Rosalie a pointed look, and she nodded, almost imperceptibly. They were both out of their comfort zones now, Emmett taking on the task of trying to make Bella see sense, and Rosalie talking to Edward. He followed Bella into the house, and when she got through to the living room, she spun on him.

"Emmett! For Christ's sake, leave it alone!"

He simply stood there for a moment, staring his sister-in-law down, and suddenly she crumpled into tears. Nessie stood beside her, her bottom lip quivering, as she gently stroked her mother's hair.  
"It's ok, Mommy, don't cry…" she whispered, and Emmett's heart broke a little bit for her. Sometimes he wondered how she'd turned out as perfect as she had, with Edward's black-and-white determination of right and wrong and Bella's stubbornness, but she seemed to be the perfect combination of all the good things her two parents were, and she seemed to have missed out on any of their shortcomings.

"Nessie, why don't you go and see if you can help Grandma Esme with her cooking?" Emmett bent down to eye level with the little girl, and cupped her cheek. "I'm gonna make sure Mommy's ok, yeah? You trust me?"

Nessie seemed to consider, then nodded slowly. She hug Bella loosely around the middle and then scrambled off out of the room, leaving the door swinging behind her. Bella looked up at Emmett through tear-filled eyes.

"Sit down." He whispered, guiding her over to one of Esme's sofas. "it's ok."

She shook her head. "It's not ok." She murmured, wiping her eyes fiercely with her back of her hand, "I knew we must have been affecting Nessie, but I… I didn't think it would upset her _that _much… I guess I can't remember much when Charlie and Renee were fighting… I didn't want to hurt her…"

Emmett put an arm around her, and she leant into his shoulder. "What's going on now, Bells? I thought you sorted it out after he found out about your degree?"

She shook her head miserably. "I… I can't seem to look at him the same way after what he thought about me… he thought I was cheating on him, Emmett! And… there's no trust there anymore… God knows I love him so much… but we're not who we used to be…"

He pressed a brotherly kiss to her forehead, and hugged her tighter. "And you've tried talking about how you feel with Edward?"

She nodded bleakly. "And the talks just escalate into the fights… and Nessie cries… and I feel like a terrible mother…"

Emmett sighed, a thought was creeping up on him. He had a horrible feeling that he knew what would be best for Bella and Edward and Renesmee right now, but it would break their hearts. And Esme's heart. And Rosalie's heart. He wouldn't, _couldn't _suggest it. They would have to find their own way.

"You know you need to sit down and speak to him sensibly about where this is all going, right, Bells? Cos… this isn't just affecting you, you know that now…"  
A fresh wave of sobs seemed to hit her. "I… Oh God, I've been such a bad parent… how could Nessie not want to come home with us?"

He stroked her hair lightly. "She's just… what's going on right now isn't making any of you happy, is it?"

Bella shook her head sadly.

"Come on, then, lets all go and talk like adults about it."

She narrowed her eyes slightly at his mildly patronising tone, but realised in an instant that this was Emmett here, always trying to put things right, always trying to help. As she got up, she caught his arm, holding him back for a second.

"You know… you know we can't go on like this, don't you?" she whispered. He looked into her eyes for a moment, and she was sure he understood what she meant.

"I know." He said sadly, "I know."

* * *

"We can't do this anymore, Rosalie." Were the first words Edward said as he shut the two of them in the study. Her heart thumped, denial rising in her chest. _They were Edward and Bella, this couldn't happen to them._

"You might be able to sort it out… if you really listen…" she attempted, but he shook his head.  
"I can't… after the idea started… that she might have been cheating-"

"She wasn't!"

He shook his head. "I can't… can't seem to bring myself to trust her anymore, and she can hardly bring herself to talk to me… and we're hurting our baby…"

Rosalie shook her head, hating the tears rising in her eyes, lurking below the surface, clinging to the hope that this might be all sorted. "You just have to talk…"

He shook his head again, gritted his teeth. "Jeez, Rosalie, I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this."

It was unnecessary, but they'd never been the best of friends. Close, somehow, but not caring, if that even made any sense. He was irritant, unlikeable, grumpy. She was arrogant, vain, self-righteous. In each other's eyes they were far from perfect, and they didn't tend to talk to each other – not like this. They weren't close like _this. _But right now Edward was near to tears beside her, Alice and Jasper were in Thailand by now, Nessie needed Carlisle and Esme, and Emmett was taking care of Bella. So he was going to have to make do with her, if he needed anyone.

"I… we… we're not the same people we used to be." He said, putting his head in his hands and sinking into Carlisle's study chair behind him. She shook her head bitterly, thinking of the photos Emmett had displayed for her on the wall, the faith she'd had that Bella hadn't cheated, the relief she'd felt when she thought that now they had regained their honesty, they could regain their trust. There was a lump in her throat the size of Everest and she couldn't seem to make it go away…

"You can't just give up!" Rosalie shouted, feeling her eyes overflowing, "She didn't do anything wrong, you didn't do anything wrong! What reason do you have for-"

"Simply that we can't find the answer to this." Edward said, eyes cold. "And… we shouldn't hurt Nessie anymore…"

Rosalie was shaking her head at him. "You can't… you can't just push it into a box, Edward, pretend it meant nothing… you can't walk away…"

"I'm not walking away! I… I have to think about what is best for all of us now… and this clearly isn't working!!"

There was a knock on the door, and it opened without waiting for an answer. Bella burst in, tear tracks running down her face, her eyes wide with shock, and a grim realisation. She and Edward looked at each other for a second, staring each other down. Emmett stepped in behind her and took Rosalie's hand, leading her slowly away.

"Bella… we need to… we can't keep hurting each other, and Nessie, like this…" Edward started to say, as Emmett pulled Rosalie the final way out and closed the door. He thumbed Rosalie's tears away silently and kissed her temple.

"How can you… how can you just leave them in there like that?" she asked, forcing that lump in her throat away. Emmett pulled her close and led her slowly away from the closed door. No shouting could be heard, so he assumed that finally they were facing up to everything and talking it through… Nessie's temporary disappearance had given them all a shock… and Emmett thought that maybe the reason all Edward and Bella had been doing was shouting for the past months was because they were afraid. Afraid that if they were able to rationalise, be civil, sensible and adult, they would realise that somehow, without them even noticing, everything had fallen apart at the seams.

"Because, Rose… if they're gonna be ok… they will… and if they're not… there's nothing we can do to stop that…"  
She hugged him tightly, and he knew she was fearing the same thing happening to them in a few years time.

"I'm never going to stop loving you." He whispered, kissing her hair.

She shook her head. "That's it, though. Edward hasn't stopped loving Bella, and she certainly hasn't stopped loving him, it's just…"

"Life's caught up with them?"

She nodded, twining her fingers through hers. "Exactly. What if life catches up with us?"

He thought about the prospect of a baby, he thought about ten little Cullens running around in the front garden of a cute little Forks house, he thought about waking up next to Rosalie every day until they were a hundred and ten… and none of it made him want to run away screaming. "It's not going to, I promise."

* * *

It was that evening when the phone rang, and they looked between each other for a moment, dreading the news that would come down it. Rosalie, in the end, swallowed and picked up the phone.

"Rosalie speaking."

"Rose… it's Bella…"

"Bells, are you all right?"

There was a sniff from the other end, and Rosalie could hear Nessie singing something in the background… and another voice.  
"Where are you?"

"I'm at home, Rose… with Charlie and Sue…"

Rosalie's heart sunk. Somewhere, in a heart that had been allowed for the past few years to become optimistic again, she had hoped they would resolve everything.

"Oh God, what happened?"

"We… we decided it was best if we separated for a while… we can't… we don't talk anymore, we don't trust each other anymore… it's…it's not permanent, that's what he said…"

"I'm sorry, Bella…"

Another sniff, and an audible swallow. "Can… can I speak to Emmett, please?"

And Rosalie handed the phone over, heart heavy, with a grim frown.

**A/N: I GUARAN****TEE**** YOU THERE WILL BE A HAPPY ENDING. Please don't shoot me, don't boycott this story, don't flame me. :L**

**This is where the story wanted to go… where it needs to go… and I've got it all planned out… I know where I want it to end, how I want it to be resolved… *hides* don't hurt me.**

**Bella and Edward… something has gone very wrong with them, and this is the only way they can see AT THE MOMENT to sort it out. Absence can often make the heart grow fonder… ;)**

**Review, please… but don't be too mean. Trust me to finish off this story right. That's all I'm asking.**


	14. Chapter 14

**Firstly, a HUGE apology. I'm sorry I've taken an obscene amount of time to upload this chapter, I've had the busiest week, full of mock exams. From now until the 15th June I have my AS exams, so be prepared for updates to be a little more scarce than they were previously. I will try and get some up, a few each week, because I've got this whole story planned and so many ideas… and I want to get started on the third part in this story, too, provisionally titled A Mask of Petals. But right now I need to pass these exams… thank you for your ongoing support. :)**

**Chapter Fourteen**

Alice Hale had only been home in the little house in Forks she and Jasper had bought when there was a knock on the door. She towel-dried her short hair briefly and called down to her husband – how different and good that sounded – to answer the door. Shoving on some clothes, she hurtled down the stairs. Bella was sat at the kitchen table, her face pale, her eyes red-rimmed.

"Bells? Are you all right?" she asked, hugging her friend tightly. "I hadn't expected to see you until tomorrow!"

Bella's eyes filled with tears, and she hugged Alice back. Jasper bowed quietly out of the room, without a word.

"I came… I came to tell you I won't be there tomorrow."

Alice frowned. "Why? I thought I said all the family had to be there, it's Jasper and my homecoming!"

Bella gave a small smile, taking her friend's two hands. "I'm not part of the family anymore, Alice."

"What are you talking about?" Alice's voice was shaky. Something was dawning on her as Bella spoke…

"I… Edward and I… we've split up… just temporarily… we're trying a separation…"

Alice sunk into the chair, surprisingly heavily for someone so small. She stared down at their clasped hands for a moment.

"What… what happened?"

And Bella started her story, complete with tears and squeezed hands and watery smiles and sad eyes… and when she was done Alice put her arms around her friend and held her whilst she cried.

* * *

Rosalie checked the calendar one final time, adding days, adding weeks, adding chances. Her heart was thumping, her eyes beginning to sting. Then, with a slight added spring in her step, she waltzed into the living room, where Emmett was watching a game on the new TV. She walked right over to the television set and turned it off, and then stood, looking at him, her hands on her hips, and a rough and failing attempt not to smile on her face.  
"What have I done?" Emmett asked, worry rising in his eyes. She laughed, and walked over to him, perching herself on his lap and claiming his lips with her own.

"I'm late." She whispered. "Two days late, officially."

Emmett frowned. "Huh?"

She kissed him again. "My period, you fool." She laughed. Emmett's eyes widened, and a smile begun to form.

"You mean, you could be…"

She nodded, kissing him again. "I could be pregnant, yeah." She whispered, and the words were a promise, a prayer, to both of them. More kisses followed, and then Emmett pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.

"This is really real now, huh?"

She smiled slightly, but checked herself. "It's really early days, yet, Emmett… I… I, uh…"

"We need to get you a pregnancy test, and take it from there, yeah?"

She nodded, burying her head in the warm, safe space between his head and shoulder. "Are you… is this…" she started, but seemed unable to finish off her sentence. Emmett kissed the top of her head lightly, ran gently ran his fingers through her soft blonde hair.

"Exactly what I want? Of course." He whispered, "You already make me the happiest man alive, Rosalie… this just…"

"Makes it even better?" she finished, smiling wider than she thought possibly, pressing kiss after kiss to his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth…

He nodded, and encased her in his arms.

"I love you, Mrs Cullen." He laughed, and she brought her lips down to his again, sealing their deal.

That night, as she lay in bed, tucked under one of Emmett's arms, she considered. Everything was solidifying all of a sudden, like everything was coming into focus, clear as day. She could almost see it, a child running across a garden, first the Cullens' garden, but then maybe another, smaller garden, surrounded, as clichéd as it was, by a white picket fence… or a picket fence in any colour, the details really weren't important. She could put features from both their faces and rearrange them with brown curls and blue eyes and blonde hair and brown eyes and little dresses and little sets of dungarees…

It was beautiful.

* * *

She was woken by the telephone, and groaned, it being the weekend. But as Emmett didn't appear to be surfacing, she rolled out of bed, groping around on the nightstand for her cell phone. When she realised it didn't appear to be hers that was ringing, she crawled across her husband to grab his, which was viciously vibrating on the stand on the other side of the bed. Groaning, she looked at the caller ID. Alice. She pressed the button to start the call, and before she had a chance to get a word in edgeways, her little sister-in-law had started ranting.

"Ok, what the hell is Edward doing? I'd only been home for like half an hour and Bella turned up here, crying. What's going on? Has he said anything to you? Bella said it's been coming for a while but I never saw anything wrong, did you? It… it doesn't make sense, and if this is Edward being a dick I am going to personally strangle our dear brother, Emmett and-"

"Alice, it's Rosalie."

There was silence for a second. Then, "Oh. Where's Emmett?"

"It's nine thirty on a Sunday morning, Alice, where do you think?"

She could almost see the knowing smile touching her friend's mouth. "Oh. Right. Bed."

Rosalie nodded, "Yes. I'm… I'm sorry we didn't let you know about Bella and Edward, we didn't want you to ruin your honeymoon…"

"Well, I would have come straight home, made them sort it out!" Alice said, indignant, and Rosalie was reminded all of a sudden quite how young Alice still was, and quite how fortunately sheltered she'd often been, always seeing the best in every situation, in every person. But there was no way even Alice could see the best in this, quite possibly the end of a family she had constructed over the past almost-decade. Alice had always thought that she could fix anything – that there was a way around every problem, around every trouble… but this time nothing seemed so obvious.

"Alice…" Rosalie started, and Emmett stirred behind her, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and looking bewilderedly around for a reason he had risen so early on his weekend lie-in. He heaved himself upwards, at the sight of Rosalie's bare back, cream skin against the dark red Egyptian cotton sheets she'd wrapped herself it, gold hair flowing down over her back, voice silky sweet and smooth in her hushed tone. "Alice, it was… it was difficult for them both, but they had to… they had to decide what was best for Renesmee…"

There was a silence on the other end. "Nothing's gonna be the same anymore, is it?" she said in a small voice. Rosalie shook her head.

"No, Alice, but we'll have to make the best of it. For Edward, for Bella and for Nessie… they don't need us making anything any worse. We have to stand by them all, whatever happens."

"I suppose you're right… I just…I guess I'd thought we'd always be together, the six of us, y'know?"

Rosalie knew exactly how Alice was feeling, and consequently she knew that there wasn't anything she could say or do to make her friend feel better. Right now, everything was falling apart at the seams, everyone was slowly edging apart… she supposed that was them getting older, changing, marrying, starting families… but all of a sudden there was a longing for the old days, the high school days, the picnics in the woods sat on the bonnet of Emmett's Jeep, the laughter echoing through the rooms of the Cullens' huge house, the dreams of college, of the future… the contentment just _being _with each other.

"Alice?"

"Uh huh?"

"I… there's a possibility… I don't wanna jinx it but I… I… might be pregnant."

There was a silence for a moment, and then Alice gave a tiny gasp.

"Really, Rose? How did you… when did you?"

"I'm just late, but… but we're gonna buy a test and…"

"I've got my fingers crossed for you." Alice said, and Rosalie could hear the smile in her voice.

* * *

Two days later, she was in the bathroom at the Practice, tears welling up, blurring her vision, as she stared into the mirrors. She was between clients, and any minute anyone, staff or patient could walk into the bathroom, but just for a few moments… everything, it was all overwhelming her.

Everything had been so busy, they hadn't bought the test yet.

And now they didn't have to. A spot of blood proved that it had just been wishful thinking, a cruel coincidence, someone up there messing with her head. She'd grown attached to something that hadn't even existed in the first place, something that hadn't even begun. She swallowed hard, trying to calm the rising emotion inside her, forcing the pain down.

It wasn't her last chance, it was just the first. She would have to try again.

And again and again, until she finally got there.

She was in it for the long haul.

**A/N: Again, sorry it took so long. Plus my computer's been playing up all weekend so I've posted this the moment I managed to make my internet connection actually work. Grrrr. Not impressed. AT ALL. Hope you liked this chapter, it was quite fillerish, but I'm not gonna lie, we're headed for the angst monkey right now, and this all needed to be put out there before that. Please all of you, keep your faith in me. I never promised sweetness and light the whole way. Love you all.**

**Xxx**


	15. Chapter 15

**Here I go…. :L**

**Chapter Fifteen**

"If you would follow me, Mr Rogers, and I'll see if I can get you done quickly." Emmett said smiling. Aaron Rogers was one of his most challenging patients, a thirty year old man with aching joints like a person on over seventy, and for a while Emmett had treated him with various types of physiotherapy, but nothing seemed to be working. He'd begun to get worried, and now he had brought Mr Rogers into Forks General hospital, getting Carlisle to pull a few strings and get him an orthopaedic consult. It probably was just premature arthritis, but something didn't seem to quite add up and Emmett wanted it checked out with a bone scan as quickly as possible.

After he had handed Mr Rogers over to Dr Farrell, the orthopaedic attending and a friend of his father's, he walked down to the hospital canteen to grab a coffee. Sitting towards the edge of the eating area on a solitary, he looked around him. He had so many memories in this place, it practically belonging to his parents… he'd run through the halls with Edward and Alice as a child, they'd been coddled and cooed at by the nurses and the interns…. he'd seen Rosalie in here, the moment the true extent of what might have happened to her had hit him… Alice, pale and still on the floor at Jessica Stanley's party… lying in the bed himself, head throbbing with the punch he'd taken… everyone, all of them, crowding around Bella's bed, admiring Nessie in her first few hours, declaring her the most beautiful baby any of them had ever seen. He was at ease here. He hadn't chosen the same path his father and brother had, he hadn't chosen to work here, but this place was a part of him, still. Moments here had defined them all, and he hoped more moments would define him still. He hoped Rosalie could have their child here, maybe, one day. Ever since the day she'd thought she could have been pregnant, a few weeks ago now, it had been more intense, more desperate in his mind, and suddenly he found himself wanting it more than ever. Wanting a baby, a beautiful little half and half mixture of the pair of them. And she tried to hide it, but he could see that Rosalie wanted it more than she'd wanted anything in her life. He could see… almost grief in her eyes when the first time hadn't been what they'd thought, he could read the longing there, every moment… and he wanted to make her happy, that was what he wanted most of all.

He decided to take a walk down to outpatients to see one of his friends from high school, a boy who'd been on the football team with him, and who had since become an intern here in the hospital. It should only be about twenty minutes before Mr Rogers would done, and then he could rule out anything sinister – at least, that was the intention, his hope from the scans – and head back to the Practice to come up with another physiotherapy plan.

He was halfway through the outpatients' wing when his world shifted.

* * *

Esme winced as the needle pinched her skin slightly, but sighed in relief as she saw the blood filling up the syringe. Finally, she would have some truth, be it good or bad. She swallowed, thinking of the implications of it, if it were bad news, and her hands shook slightly as she held the tube steady. Carlisle gave her a reassuring smile. Her Carlisle, her perfect angel saviour, her beautiful husband, and here he was, smiling at her comfortingly, when she knew it was hurting him as much as it was hurting her. Holding her secret for her against his better judgement. Shielding her children.

"I'll get them all on top priority. We should have the results in a couple of hours. But right now, you need to go down to Dr Wandell to get that checked out."

"Get what checked out?"

Esme's heart skipped a beat. The disembodied voice was too familiar, terrifyingly so. She looked up to see her worst nightmare – her eldest son stood in the doorway, a concerned expression on his face. She swallowed, suddenly unable to breathe, think, speak. It was her husband, again, that came to her rescue.

"Emmett? I think you'd better come in and sit down."

* * *

Esme had found a lump, about three weeks ago. Being a doctor, she'd known she should have gotten it checked out right away, but something inexplicable happens to you when you find something like that. Your first instinct is to freeze, to pretend like there's nothing there, that if you ignore it for long enough, it will go away. But she was strong, stronger than many people would ever know, and when she felt it getting bigger and sore, she had clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, and held her husband whilst he told her.

She pretended she hadn't heard Carlisle's shallow breaths of fear in their bathroom afterwards, and she hadn't felt him laying awake next to her all night, pretending with all his heart to be sleeping soundly, so she might. They… bounced off each other, Esme and Carlisle, they always had, and now, even though she was the one with the physical signs of anything wrong, they were both protecting the other, both doing everything they could to share the one person they loved the most in the world any hurt they could.

And the next morning, Carlisle had cancelled his shift at the Practice and they had both taken a trip down to Forks General – off the books, for the first time. And Carlisle was running the blood, right here, right now. He was, honestly terrified, and in that situation the only person he dared to trust was himself. He was the only person who he could one hundred percent make sure ran every possible test, checked over every result a hundred times, didn't skip over anything, double checked… his mind had been working in overdrive since she told him, and everything was crumbling. He loved Esme more than anything else in the world, and ever since he had met her, bruised and broken on the exam table in his doctor's office, years and years and years ago, he had vowed he would do everything he could to protect her. But this… what this could be… might be something he couldn't protect her from.

* * *

Emmett could hardly speak. There was bile rising in his throat, his heart was thudding, his palms were sweating. He swallowed. His parents, both worried, hands clasped together, pale skin the same shade exactly, were staring at him.

"So… what now?" he managed to choke out, all the while feeling distant from the whole thing. This wasn't him, this wasn't happening to _his mother. _Oh no. He was just… watching.

"We run the tests." Carlisle said, "and your mother goes down to Oncology to get the lump checked out. And we go from there."

Esme forced a smile, and Emmett hated himself in that moment, knowing how terrified she must be, yet being in such a state she felt the need to comfort him

"And what if it is…" he couldn't bring himself to say _that word. _It would make it definite; make it so real that it would hurt them all.

"We fight it." Carlisle answered for his wife again, and she gave him a small, grateful smile. "We fight it, and we destroy it."

Emmett's hands were shaking as Esme got up to head down to oncology.

"I… I…"

"Everyone else will have to know soon, son." Carlisle said. "But we wanted to keep it from you children until we knew for definite either way." The last two words were strangled, painful. Emmett nodded.

"I…"

"Tell Rose." Carlisle said, knowing exactly the question his son was going to ask. "I know you'll need her."

Emmett nodded slowly, and reached for his phone. She was maybe the one person in the world that could make an ounce of difference to him right now.

**A/N: I'm not going to write much, I'm bracing myself for angry reviews. Eeek!!! The angst monkey is here!**


	16. Chapter 16

**Don't hurt me. I'm so sorry I haven't posted in so long, but among other things, like exams and revision and sorting out my future… I spilt coffee all over my computer keyboard, which caused a large problem, computer keyboard out of order :'(. But, I was GOD, and I took it to pieces, cleaned it with a fresh makeup brush and some distilled water, and now it works!! All except for the right arrow, which I don't even need :)**

**Here I go… this might be the angsty-est chapter EVER.**

**Chapter Sixteen**

The little negative sign made the crack in her heart move jaggedly a little closer to the apex. This was the third now, and although she had been taking one every moment she was a day late – she couldn't bear the waiting, to the point where she literally thought she would go insane if she thought she had to wait for another speck of blood to crush her dreams again. Instead, it was the little negative sign that was breaking her heart more and more each time.

With a small, almost inaudible sigh, she shoved the test back in the cardboard bow and threw it in their little steel bin, listening to the dull clank as it fell into the bottom. Emmett wouldn't find it… he wouldn't be emptying the bins, not right now. She… she'd never seen him like this, and they'd been through some hard times. He was… broken, weak… _nothing _to what he usually was. And it concerned her more than ever, because it made her realise how he'd always been the one picking up her pieces, putting her back together, holding her up… all along he'd always been the strong one. She could probably count on her fingers the number of times she'd seen him cry, and even then, she'd probably been crying too. But these last few weeks… and understandably… something had leached out of him and he wasn't quite the Emmett he used to be anymore.

She'd gone with him and Esme and Carlisle to get the results from the oncologist. Esme had been adamant that Alice and Edward find nothing out about it until they knew for sure one way or the other. It wasn't the other.

Someone said something to her about cancer, breast cancer, and a stage and a number, and something about various forms of treatment, but Rosalie couldn't take anything in. Emmett' face had fallen completely – she'd never understood that saying until that moment… it was as if all the happiness and light and sparkle was just drained out of his face as if it were a sieve, and he was ashen, grey. It was Carlisle and Esme, though, that finished her off. Carlisle' fists clenched, his knuckles turning white, he looked like he was going to say something, he looked like he was going to move, but he also seemed to be frozen where he was. It was Esme that walked over to him, put her arms about his waist and her head on his chest and held him until his muscles relaxed and he loosened his fingers.

It didn't… Rosalie couldn't even comprehend the place she was in in that moment. If she'd had faith in Edward and Bella, Alice and Jasper, her and Emmett… that was _nothing, _nothing at all compared to the absolute faith, absolute conviction she had had that Esme and Carlisle would always be just that, Esme and Carlisle, perfect, untouchable, complete.

She wasn't sure how much more ruin and upheaval her life could take. Something terrible would happen, it seemed, and she and Emmett would strain and almost break before they tacked it together, at a stretch, with something stronger than sticky tape, but not much stronger, and then the moment it was holding by itself, something else would come and cut right through that patch job. It was so unbelievably difficult – she'd come to see Esme as a mother herself, and yet Esme was so unbelievably strong.

She wasn't a doctor, and she didn't think she could quite stomach everything that she was going to be going through, treatment and surgery and endless drugs. And she trusted Edward and Carlisle to make sure everything was all right there. But the first time they had seen Esme, headscarf boldly around her head, hooked up to that violent looking chemo machine – she'd watched her husband blanche, and had needed to take his hand to stay standing.

It was said that bad things happened to good people, and although Rosalie had always thought that hideously unfair it seemed to be proving true. Esme was one of the _best _people she knew, in temperament, in kindness, in judgement. Something about this silent killer, this deadly disease that had just crept up on them all without an ounce of warning – something made Rosalie unbelievably angry. She wanted to shout and scream and throw things and just _cry… _but she could see from where she was standing she had another role to play. However she felt about Esme, Emmett felt worse, Emmett had more of a connection, Emmett was losing more. And for the first time, she had to hold his head above the water, whisper in his war, hold him when he needed holding, leave him when he needed leaving. It was exhausting, draining, impossible… but she wouldn't have left him alone for all the world… everything he had done for her… she could never begin to pay him back.

The worst thing to watch was Renesmee. Already shaken by not living with her father anymore, the little girl had retreated into herself, and was

Emmett had gone with his parents, Alice and Edward to have Esme's test retaken and to get the results, and here she was, yet again, in the bathroom, with another negative test. Tears dashed from her eyes – she'd promised herself she wouldn't worry Emmett with all the failed attempts right now… she could hardly handle seeing him so broken, another thing would just put further strain on both of them. But this… suddenly everything was falling apart… she didn't understand… she'd thought it would have been easy, it was the sort of thing you never expected to be hard. But something… something didn't feel right, deep inside, like a knot of worry, of tension, and somehow _she knew._

Something wasn't right. She wasn't going to have this baby by herself.

The sound of their phone startled her. She washed her hands and ran to pick it up, seeing Emmett' cell number on the caller ID.

"Hello?"

"Babe, it me." Something was different in his voice… something was positive.

"Is everything ok?"

"She's been given the all-clear! The doctor says that she's completely cancer free and there's a 75% chance that the cancer won't ever flare up again!"  
Two tears leaked out of Rosalie's eyes. "That's brilliant, honey." She whispered, "Give my congratulations to Esme from me."

"I'll be home soon, Rose. I love you."

It was the first time he had said it like that, with such conviction and such a bright tone since his mother's diagnosis.

"Love you too."

The dialling tone rung in her ear and she crumpled to the floor. It was brilliant, but it was cruel. Because she'd been masking the fear of this baby thing with Esme's illness. She'd been throwing herself into being there for Emmett and facing every hurdle in that road that when that was over, when that was solved…

She'd built up the dream of being a family with Emmett and a baby so much she didn't think it would be possible to let it go. But she had to face those demons now, she had no other excuse.

It might be that she could never be a mother, that was something she would have to face. But it wasn't something she was going to take easily.

**A/N: Sorry it's been so long in posting, like I said, I've been very very busy (and still am)**

**Review, please. The angst monkey is by no means finished.**


	17. Chapter 17

**Guys, I'm back. I've had the most horrendous of exams and I denied myself this story because I knew what a distraction it would be. I've just started my second year of college though, so I'm not promising completely regular updates, but I'm hopefully getting on this horse again ;)**

**I've had some time away from this fic, to deal with some of the issues you and I had with it, and I'm sticking to my original plan. Some of you may take issue with it, and I'm not deliberately trying to irk my readers, I promise, but sometimes you get a story that tells you where it wants to go, and this one… this one wasn't taking no for an answer. So knuckle down and cope with it, or you're welcome to leave, though I'd rather you didn't. The last one was my epic baby. This one is my angst baby. The next one… the next one will probably be my fluff baby, to make up for all this angst.**

**This is longest author's note ever.**

**Onto the fic.**

**Chapter Seventeen**

The house hadn't been this bright in weeks, and the smells of Esme's home cooking certainly hadn't wafted through into the front hall as Emmett and Rosalie stepped through, greeted by Carlisle, whose smile had finally started to reach his eyes again.

Rosalie always felt like someone out of a day time drama when they walked through the front doors of Esme and Carlisle's house. Like the extended family arriving for the awkward meal strewn with argument, accusations and dramatic revelations… but it was never like that there. Their family meals were littered with loud laughing (usually from Emmett), dark sarcasm (where Edward was the culprit) and slightly awkward silences when anyone noticed Alice and Jasper's meaningful looks, interspersed with _Renesmee, _who couldn't quite be defined. But they hadn't had one of these in what seemed like forever, given the speed the seconds had been turning into minutes whilst they'd all been living in fear on Esme's behalf. Rosalie was overcome by a rush of gratefulness; despite her struggle to start a family, she would always be part of this one.

Edward was hovering in the hall, and he nodded towards the pair of them. She sighed slightly, but the little heave of the shoulders and the regret whenever she saw her brother in law or Bella had become habit now, etched into her with barely a second thought. He'd never been the warmest of people; although she knew, after the years of experience she had had of him, that he had a good heart, now he was frighteningly cold. The only time anyone saw him smile anymore seemed to be around his daughter, and a week ago, when Esme had been given the all clear, Emmett came home saying that after the initial laughing and hugging and smiling Edward had sunken into his morose self again, hardly able to bring light into his own eyes.

No matter how long they were apart, no matter how much she tried to adjust to this new situation, the new family ties they all had, somehow weaker and less impressive than before, she couldn't seem to. There was one thing, always in her mind. Edward and Bella were meant for each other. More so than she and Emmett, more so than Alice and Jasper. She… she'd never seen anyone quite like them, not in the early days. They weren't just _together; _they weren't even quite two people anymore. People used to watch them when they were sat on a park bench and they walked past, people would whisper under their breath in high school, breathing would hitch and hearts would pump faster when they entered a room and no one was really sure why. There was something innately _wrong _about them being apart.

But Bella was coming to the meal today. There'd been a hushed fight about it between Edward, Carlisle and Emmett, surprisingly Carlisle insisting that Esme cared for Bella like a daughter, the same way she loved Rosalie and Jasper, and she wanted her to be there, and Emmett saying that it would turn into an argument, the whole celebration would turn painful if the two of them were there together. Edward sat quietly to the side, watching father and son discuss him backwards and forwards, until they all noticed Esme standing quietly in the doorway, her mouth turned down in a small frown.

"Bella's as much a part of this family as I am." She whispered, "That doesn't change, Edward, because you two can't sort something out at the moment."

Edward had started to roll his eyes at his mother, about to say something about how it wasn't just some argument and how he didn't know where the future would be going for him and Bella… and then Esme's face broke into a wide smile and she left the room, ducking out of the doorway as the tears filled her eyes. She couldn't explain how nice it was to have her son treating her like he had _before… _before he started fearing that one day she wouldn't be there anymore to mock gently, to laugh with, back before he started treating her like she was made of crystal glass… But she'd taken a deep breath and dried her eyes and phoned his estranged wife to invite her, knowing that even in the current situation Bella wouldn't have the heart to refuse if it was coming from her.

Emmett and Rosalie walked through to the kitchen, Emmett wrapping his arms round his mother's waist and giving her a hug – no different to what he would always have done, except the hug was different. Somehow longer, somehow deeper, more meaningful. No moment could go to waste, not anymore. Rosalie gave Esme a warm smile, and turned through into the dining room, where Bella was sat at the end of the table with Renesmee, tucking a napkin into the front of her daughter's dress. She looked up, giving Rosalie a world weary smile, and seemed desperate, caught at the end of the table, knowing that despite the fact that this whole family loved her dearly, blood was still thicker than water and almost everyone who would be sat around the table in the next few minutes, despite the occasion of celebration, was related by blood to Edward.

Rosalie wasn't sure when she'd started to see Edward and Bella as opposite sides of a war, but it had crept up on her and somehow she could see everyone torn between the sides, caught in the crossfire. She wasn't going to stand on either front line… she loved the pair of them, and more than anything she wanted their battle to end not only in sweet surrender, but a strong and lasting alliance… she snapped out of her reverie as she heard Edward's voice, low and serious, talking to her husband, and Bella's face turned a shade paler, despite the almost impossibility of that. She walked to the end of the table and sat down next to her friend, forcing what she was attempting as a supportive smile. Edward took a seat at the other end, facing the same direction so their eyes wouldn't make contact. He casually slid into his seat, like it meant nothing, but it was clear what he was doing and Rosalie felt Bella stiffen beside her. She quelled a sigh, and the others couldn't file in and find their seats fast enough.

Alice had cooked, as a treat for Esme, so what was served up was indescribable, bizarre, but tasty. Renesmee wrinkled her nose when she looked at it, but it only took Emmett promising her that it would make her grow up and grow wings like a fairy to make her shovel down the first spoonful… and the rest until her plate was clear. For Esme's sake, Bella and Edward didn't fight, and no one else brought up their situation. Conversation stuck to the safe topics you would talk about at a dinner party where you only knew one person, and to Emmett it felt surreal, like this wasn't his family he was sitting with. Everything had been so intense, so _difficult, _these last months, that suddenly, this fake, polite family sitting around a table talking about work and the weather and how Alice had concocted her meal… it seemed wrong.

But all he had to do was look at Carlisle, beaming across the table at his wife, thinner than she had been months ago and with a wig sat on her head that wasn't quite the colour of her real hair, but alive, healthy, strong.

And then he knew it was real.

They said their goodbyes soon after dinner, as they both had early starts at the Practice in the morning. Bella left Renesmee with Edward and the three of them walked out the front door, Rosalie and Emmett shouting their goodbyes, and Bella's cheeks flushing as she was at a loss for words. Rosalie hugged Bella goodbye, and her friend's face lit up as she told them both the secret she'd been keeping due to the stress of trying to hold down her emotions over dinner.

"I passed my exams, Rose! I'm starting at the Practice next week!"

And they hugged her, both of them, and drove away in companionable silence.

* * *

For some reason, neither of them felt like going to bed particularly early that evening, and they crashed on the sofa, Emmett channel hopping through bad sci-fi films and Rosalie rolling her eyes and curling her fingers through his curls absent-mindedly, making a smile the constant feature on his face. Eventually he pressed the button and the TV screen descended into darkness, leaving them curled up together, with nothing but the twilight produced by the street lamps and the darkness shining in through the window.

He pressed a kiss to the side of her jaw, and she buried her head in his chest. He knew how everything with Edward and Bella drained her, and now that everything was ok, now that his mother was going to be all right, he could begin to see the toll that Esme's illness had taken on her. It wasn't that he had been selfish in that time, but he hadn't… he just hadn't the emotional capacity to worry about Rose as well, not when the family he'd grown up in, and the woman he'd loved the most in the world for his first seventeen years, were crumbling around him. But now… now he was reassured by the bright smiles and Alice's cooking and the family dinner, he realised that for the first time in his life he had really leant on Rosalie, and that was never going to have been easy for her, something new, foreign soil…

"Emmett?" she whispered, and her voice was husky with tiredness and emotion, not to mention being buried in his shirt, feeling the tiny plastic buttons press into her face. She pulled back, looking him in the eyes, which were fluorescing through the dark.

"Hmmm?"

"This… what if this baby… what if it's not happening by itself?"

Her voice was shaking, and in an instant he realised how difficult that fear was to voice. He drew her a little closer, raking his fingers gently through her hair. For a moment, he was lost for words. What if this baby wasn't coming? What if he never got to have a child? He couldn't imagine how definite that was, how horrible it would feel. But he knew that the pain he felt, it would be a hundred times worse for his wife, who had set everything on this one thought, this one dream. It had become her sole hope, and nature might just be poised to crush it.

"D'you really not think-"

She took a deep breath, wishing she could brush it off, pretend that they could just keep trying. "I can feel it, Emmett… something isn't right… I…"

He felt the tear drip onto his arm before her shoulders shook a little.

"We'll… we'll do something about it, Rose. Don't cry… we'll sort something out… we can fight for this…"

She was nodding, but she was still crying. It seemed that talking about it had created some gaping hole in the dam that even he couldn't fix.

"We'll go… we'll go to Bella… we could be her first patients, Rose. See if she can tell us what's wrong, and then we can fix it."

More nodding, less crying.

For a moment there was silence, complete still.

"I don't think I can even explain how much I love you." She murmured, and he laughed, but his whole heart wasn't in it, the thudding still there at the thought that it might be him stopping her from having a baby. After everything he'd tried to do for her, he might be stopping this from happening. He swallowed.

Then she pressed her lips to his, wild, desperate, and his mind was robbed of all thought.

**A/N: There we go, guys, I'm well and truly back!! I hope you approved!**

**x**


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen**

She watched as Bella sealed the cap on the tiny tubes of blood, and set them down next to Emmett's. They'd been seeing the other side of the Practice all morning… having tests run in the consultation room like any other patients. It felt different, detached, almost daunting sitting on the other side of the desk, lying on the exam table, your blood filling up a test tube rather than someone else's. But Bella was there, smiling encouragingly at them.

"There are so many reasons why this might not be happening for you right now." She said in her newly-qualified-and-loving-every-minute-of-it fertility specialist voice, "And some of them are so easily treatable you could be laughing this time next week. And there are others that are more serious, but nothing that should make you give up hope… there are some many more ways to start a family now…"

Rosalie tried her best to give Bella a tolerant smile, but for some reason everything she'd said to her in the past half hour had irritated her. It wasn't the unnecessary smile, the constant encouragement. It wasn't even _what _she was saying, per se. It was the constant nagging thought at the back of her mind that Bella couldn't _possibly _have a clue what they were both going through, Renesmee having been conceived so easily she was accidental, and everything having flowed on from that like it was the most effortless thing in the world. She couldn't possibly understand how you could wake up every morning thinking that it was your fault a baby wouldn't grow inside you, that it was something you were doing wrong in what you ate, how you exercised, when you had sex…. Everything had become calculated, judged, trying to maximise chances. The pair of them had been like a bloody factory or something these past weeks, and although the sex was still good… Rosalie couldn't understand how with Emmett the sex would ever _not _be good… but all spontaneity had been lost. The romance element was fading, despite desperate attempts to keep the fire burning.

But his hand was in hers now, and she knew that their love was as strong as ever. She would never, as long as she lived, completely come to terms with what had happened in her past, but she knew now, when she was in the right mood, and she was feeling particularly reflective, that maybe, had she not been so broken and so alone when she met Emmett, their relationship wouldn't have been quite as strong, quite as _perfect _as it was now. She'd leant on him so far she'd worried she'd broken him, but he'd bounced her right back up among normal people, finally thrown her back into a normal life, and she wasn't sure anyone else would ever have been able to do that for her. And then, just lately, when he'd needed the same treatment, when he'd needed to be the one doing the leaning, she'd stood there beside him, for the first time in her life, solid as a rock, and everything had turned out just fine. It was the first time she'd ever truly believed that she brought as much to the relationship as he did. That he needed her just as much as she needed him.

By the time she walked out of the consultation room, hand in hand with her husband, she had forgotten her annoyance with her best friend. Finally, they were on the road to somewhere, somehow, and although nothing was definite, nothing was fixed… they had started something, started trying to fix this, and there was _hope _again. She gave Bella a generous smile before kissing Emmett and walking to her office to start her work for the day, checking her calendar for patients.

What she realised then, with a pang of something, regret mixed with relief, maybe, that this was the first year that she hadn't woken up in the morning knowing what date it was. When she hadn't cried to herself in the bathroom, hiding herself from Emmett, who was still soundly sleeping in their bed. This morning she'd woken with a purpose… they were going to take control; they were going to have a baby, whatever it took, and this morning that thought had stopped her from descending into the usual horror and nausea that this day brought her.

It wasn't even the anniversary of her attack… she had long since stopped counting that day. This day had been much worse, as she'd managed to move on with her life, forget what Royce and the others had done to her, forget the looks on their faces, the feeling of their hands on her… she would never be distanced from in completely, but, by comparison, she was pretty darn far away now. And she could put 90% of that down to love, down to Emmett, but one measly fraction of it – that was her. Her own strength, her own hope, the fact that she had sat down in front of Royce King and spoken to him without the breath being knocked from her body, without the fear rising inside her. She had looked him in the eye and she had made it clear that he wasn't going to have any hold over her anymore. So it wasn't that day that hurt her. She had, as well as she could, as well as she had to, forgiven him for what he had done to her. Somehow. Maybe forgiven wasn't the word, but she had come to terms with it. It wasn't a part of who she was anymore. But she could never forgive him for what he had done to Chelsea Waltham, the girl who looked slightly like her with the big, sad eyes and the face that would never smile again.

That was the day it was today. The day Chelsea Waltham had become the second Rosalie, because Rosalie had gotten away. She'd hurt about Chelsea's death for a lot longer than she'd hurt about her own attack, she hadn't been able to help thinking that had she reported them all at her turn, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to kill another girl. But the past was the past, if there was one thing her terrible experience had taught her it was that, and nothing about what had happened to either her or Chelsea was ever going to change. She just had to get used to it.

She remembered the morning in college she'd woken up, in her last year, and she'd known that it was time to face up to everything. She remembered how she'd managed to tell Emmett whilst still keeping her voice steady, how she'd calmly found their home number and dialled it, her hand on the phone shaking, the other clasped tight in her fiancé's. But the moment a voice had answered, a voice announcing the name of Chelsea's sister, she'd nodded at Emmett and he'd left the room, knowing that she needed space for this.

Annabelle Waltham hadn't been at all like she expected. She remembered her shaky announcement on the phone, "My name is Rosalie Hale, and I… I was a victim of the same people that killed… that killed your sister…" and she remembered expecting to hear somewhere between a dialling tone and shouting. But Annabelle Waltham, her voice thick with tears, had wanted to talk. And had wanted to meet her.

They'd met in a small coffee bar in the local town, and part of Rosalie had been grateful that Annabelle didn't look anything like the pictures of her sister. She was equally pretty, and equally happy-looking, but in a tall, red haired way, with bright blue eyes. A few minutes into the conversation and Rosalie realised why this was – Annabelle had been adopted when Mr and Mrs Waltham had thought they couldn't have children, Chelsea had been a surprise two years later. Annabelle felt that, ever since Chelsea had died, her parents had begun to realise having an adopted child wasn't quite the same, and that they resented her for being the one still alive over their only real daughter. Her eyes had filled with tears and across the little table in the coffee shop window Rosalie had taken her hand and comforted her – and that was the moment she realised that Annabelle needed to talk to her as much as she needed to talk to Annabelle.

It hadn't taken long for the real matter to come out – Rosalie's fear that if she had reported them, they wouldn't have been able to hurt Chelsea. Annabelle gave her a bitter smile, and told her that as a third year law student she knew that these things weren't straight cut anyway, and that she didn't blame her… and Rosalie found suddenly each breath was easier to take. She'd smiled, and when they'd parted they'd hugged and exchanged cell phone numbers… and they'd become each other's shoulder to cry on over the next months.

So when the phone rang then, she knew who it would be. She knew without even looking at the caller ID that Annabelle was ringing her on this day, and she sunk into her chair and answered, the breathing still coming easily, what came from her friend's forgiveness.

**A/N: A review, if you please? ;)**


	19. Chapter 19

**Testing the boundaries of what I can do with perspectives here, I think. And OCs, and three dimensions.**

**Chapter Nineteen**

Annabelle Waltham had been eighteen when her little sister had never returned home after cheerleading practice, and ever since then she hadn't really liked the dark. It wasn't that she thought anything was going to come out of the shadows for her… hell, it hadn't even been dark, according the statements read out by the defendants in the trials she'd sat through, knuckles white on the chair. It was the way the dark cloaked around you, and you didn't have a place in hell to be… and you weren't _home._

She looked up at the big building as she hurried towards it down the street, the rain beating down on her and her fingers shaking slightly as she clutching the handle of her pull-along case. She'd never been able to understand how someone like Rosalie could live in a place like Seattle, with it's grey skies and grey streets and constant, driving rain. But Rosalie had found her home there, and Annabelle thought that if one day she was able to find someone she loved and who loved her even half as much as Emmett and Rosalie, she would stay in Seattle for them too. And although she'd only known the other girl a short time, she could see that Rosalie had reached a level of happiness that at one point in her life she had thought impossible, a level of happiness that Annabelle could only hope to find someday.

But for now, the darkness was closing in, and as she struggled up the steps of the building that the scrappy piece of paper in her hand was telling her was her friend's home, she felt her heart rate increase, as usual, the fear building inside her, Chelsea's face in her mind, no longer smiling, her wide eyes contorting in fear…

She didn't even see the final step when she tripped over it, the suitcase falling out of her reach and clunking back down the ten steps she'd just heaved it up, her purse falling open at her shoulder and her wallet and makeup bag skidding across the damp concrete steps. For a moment, she stopped, half knelt, half sprawled on the steps to Rosalie and Emmett's apartment, inwardly cursing her own fear, her own cowardice, her own clumsiness. She started to stagger to her feet, clutching for her scattered belongings, when the shadow fell over her.

For a moment her breath hitched, and the name _Royce King _echoed through her mind, although she knew exactly how tight the security was where he was staying. Her fists clenched and she prepared to give as good as she could get… standing up to take her attacker by surprise…

"You ok?" said a soft, musical voice, and she looked up into a angular but kind face, a young man in a thick grey coat, coppery brown hair topping off a pale face. There was something familiar about him, but she couldn't say she'd ever seen him before. He was holding her suitcase almost effortlessly in one hand, giving her a crooked smile.

She shook herself slightly, shoving her wallet and makeup bag back into her purse, nodding half frantically.

"Thank you." She muttered, taking the handle of the suitcase from him, making a futile attempt to disguise quite how heavy it actually was. The man raised an eyebrow at her as she let it touch the ground with a thud, unable to hold it in the air.

"You want some help with that?" he asked, and there was a hint of amusement in his eyes. She shook her head.

"I'm just going into this building, I'll be fine."

That little eyebrow-raise, again, like he was laughing at her.

"I'm going inside, too. Let me help." And he took the case from her firmly but surely, his skin brushing hers for the briefest of moments, and then started to head through the front door into the apartment block lobby. She followed doggedly behind, unsure what to say.

"Who are you visiting?" he asked jovially as he pressed the button and stood, waiting for the elevator.

"A friend." She said sharply, half embarrassed by her own behaviour. "Do you live here?"

He shook his head. "I'm just popping in on my brother and his wife, actually. They've been helping me through a bit of a rough time."

Her turn to raise her eyebrows, but he didn't notice. They stepped into the elevator in silence, and both lunged for the fifth floor button, bringing a smile to his face, and a slight blush to her cheeks.

"Where are you from, then?" he asked lightly, and she felt her breathing slow. He was just being friendly, and any minute they'd be out of this elevator and she'd never see him again.

"I live in Chicago at the moment." She said slowly, "You're local?"

He nodded, through the _ding _as the elevator doors opened. "What apartment you looking for?"

"576." She said, remembering the address on the scrap of white paper, which had probably fallen into the gutter with her fall. He stared at her for a moment, narrowing his eyes slightly. Then, "Who's your friend?"

"Rosalie Cullen."

There was a silence for a moment, and then he laughed, holding out a hand for her to shake. "I'm Edward Cullen, Emmett's brother."  
She gave him a small smile, shaking his hand, suddenly realising the source of the familiarity. Although he had a different colouring to his brother, and a much more wiry form, she could see the resemblance in the face shape and jawline to Rosalie's husband. Where Emmett was more _solid, _like some great grizzly bear, this Edward was far more lithe, shadowy… there was something dark and unreadable and completely **entrancing **about his face, too. She allowed her smile to widen a little, and they both laughed and lunged to shove their hands in the way as the elevator doors began to close, and the brush between them was electric, insane.

She hardly had time to think, for a moment she felt like an innocent teenager again, when they stepped out of the elevator, and Rosalie was there, stepping out the door of her own apartment. She stared for a second, like someone does when they see two people belonging to separate worlds standing together, and then she smiled.

"Annabelle!" her voice was full of warmth, energy, and she glanced too briefly between the pair of them for either of them to notice.

"Edward, this is Annabelle Waltham, Annie, this is…"

"I know, Rose." She smiled, still feeling the presence of Rosalie's completely transfixing brother-in-law beside her as she walked with her friend into the apartment. Emmett was sat at the kitchen table, his nose in a sports magazine, and he looked up and grinned as she walked in.

"Hey, Annie." He smiled, and she went to reach to drag her bag through the door and Edward was pulling it into the spare bedroom, a slight crooked smile on his face.

She wished her heart wasn't fluttering, she wished she couldn't feel her pulse racing… she wished she didn't seem to have the hugest _crush _on Emmett Cullen's brother… but she couldn't help herself. She swallowed, slowly, reminding herself why she was here. For Rosalie, for Chelsea, for all those years ago when she'd been eighteen and terrified of the dark because her sister hadn't come home one night, and never would again.

* * *

Emmett had thrown together some Mac n Cheese, and the four of them, Edward included, were sat around Rosalie and Emmett's table, eating hastily, in mostly silence, but it was comfortable. Annabelle had had a long journey in, and coupled with her almost-scare and shock meeting of her friend's brother in law, she'd had quite the hell of an entrance. Rosalie and Emmett had both had a long day at work, and Rosalie had been on edge for the past three days, always waiting for the knock on the door or the phone call from Bella… waiting for her friend to shed some light on what was wrong… to give them some hope or to crush it all.

Edward, however, wasn't his usual morose self. Rosalie and Emmett watched him with eyebrows raised as he talked animatedly, even raised his glass at one point to his brother's cooking, and constantly flashed them all around the table his transfixing crooked grin. Rosalie was slightly stunned by it all, but in Emmett it arose a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach, as he caught the glances the pretty redhead next to his wife was throwing his brother.

"Rose… we should, uh, go check on the pie…" he looked pointedly at her, and she gave a small, forced smile before excusing herself and leaving the table, walking into the kitchen with him. She closed the door gently and then turned to him, hands on her hips.

"What, Mr Subtle?"

Emmett rolled his eyes. "Annabelle and Edward… Edward and Annabelle…"

Rosalie's eyebrows were halfway to heaven. "What?"

Emmett made a bizarre gesture with his hands. "There's _something _there." He whispered conspiratorially, making his wife laugh out loud.

"No there's not." She shook her head at him, and he frowned. "Jeez, Emmett, they only just met… she's just… you know the effect Edward has on women."

Emmett seemed to consider for a minute, and then he looked at her, his eyes twinkling with mirth.

"All women? I don't seem to recall it was _him _that has that effect on you…"

Rosalie was trying very hard to keep her frown in place, her eyebrows raised. Emmett took a step towards her.

"As I remember, it was the _other _Cullen boy that made you get all…"

She cut him off, her lips fusing to his, letting him push her back against the kitchen cabinet. In an instant they were pressed together, every curve pressing into every valley, and Emmett's hands were sliding up, up, over her ass, her stomach, right up over her arms and into her hair… Rosalie was gripping the collar of his polo shirt to pull him closer, his evening stubble chafing against her skin…

She pulled back, eyes sparkling, face flushed. "We have guests in the other room." She hissed, and her husband smiled.

"So?" he reached for her, but she pushed him away, pressing a light kiss to his lips.

"Later." She breathed in his ear, giving him a thousand-watt smile as her hand trailed down his chest. Emmett let out the breath he had been holding. This fertility treatment, careful planning thing hadn't exactly been doing anything for the romance in their lives… this was spontaneous, exciting… like they'd used to be… He grinned at her, and, grabbing the pie in one hand, and another bottle of wine in the other, he sauntered after his wife into the other room.

But someone else was entering the room at that moment too, through the front door that Emmett had a bad habit of leaving unlocked. And all three people saw in that instant the same thing… Edward and Annabelle, heads close together, Edward murmuring something in her ear. Rosalie stopped short, her eyes going to her husband's, but on the way, they met something else… someone else.

Bella stood in the doorway of the apartment, clutching their fertility test results in her hands, staring blankly at Edward and the fiery redhead in front of her.

**A/N: Don't shoot me, I have a game plan. I promise you. What I'm asking from you as readers is trust that I will make it all come good in the end… and I know that isn't easy, since I haven't exactly been the most reliable poster in the last few months… but you all know as well as I do how life gets on top of you sometimes. Please forgive me, please keep reading, and NEVER EVER think I've given up on this baby.**

**I love you guys. And you have my solemn promise that this story does. Have. A. happy. Ending. Okay??**


	20. Chapter 20

**Here I go again…. **

**Chapter Twenty**

"Bella! Bella, will you please wait!" Rosalie was tearing down the corridor after her sort-of-still sister-in-law, after throwing a glance at her husband that quite clearly stated _stay put. _Bella had taken one look at Edward and Annabelle, their heads close, flirting, and turned and ran out of the door, Rosalie following quickly behind.

It wasn't just the look on Bella's face when she'd seen the two of them, of betrayal, of hurt, of physical pain, but it was the brown envelope she was holding tightly in one hand, that contained so many answers for Rosalie and Emmett. And here she was, tearing down the stairs in Rosalie and Emmett's apartment building like a madwoman. Rosalie's heart was tearing inside of her, cliché as that was, between the two things… her brother and sister-in-law's happiness, and the results that were there behind the single layer of brown paper. She sprinted after Bella down the steps, simply trying to ignore the fact that she was wearing her six inch Manolos, shutting out the possibility of tripping up and falling to her death from her mind.

Bella, somehow subconsciously, must have had some sort of sympathy for Rosalie's feet. She was sitting on the bottom step in the concrete stairwell, head in her hands, envelope in her lap. Rosalie sighed deeply with relief, before tottering down the last flight of stairs and sitting down beside her friend, not close enough to be touching, simply near enough, she hoped, to reassure Bella slightly. When her friend looked up, her eyes were surprisingly dry, which concerned Rosalie more than if she had been crying. There was a look in her eyes, a blank, cold look that made her shiver.

"Bells…"

Bella shook her head, and looked down at the floor, like it was too much to hold her friend's gaze at that point. When she spoke, her voice was shaky and small.

"Rose… I… Jeez… this has all gone too far now… I don't wanna be away from him… I don't want Nessie not to have us both; together… this separation thing has and always will be stupid… I… me and Edward, we're supposed to be together, y'know?? I… I don't want him to be with some other girl… and I'm sorry, Rose, I'm so sorry…"  
"Sorry for what?" Rosalie said, but her heart was already sinking, she could feel the nausea rising. The brown envelope was shaking in her sobbing friend's hands, and suddenly, more than anything, she wanted to rip it out of those hands and do something… but whether she wanted to rip it apart or rip it open, she hadn't decided. Bella looked up at her with tear-filled eyes.

"I was up all night, trawling through the results, searching for a mistake, but there isn't one, Rose… I just…"

Something changed in Rosalie, like a switch flicking inside her. All the emotions seemed to stop, everything seemed to turn numb. She swallowed slowly, her eyes seeming to dry themselves, and she stared Bella in the eyes, violet into brown.

"Just tell me." And her voice sounded dead to her own ears. Bella frowned, cocking her head to one side subconsciously, like she was trying to find something in Rosalie's face that she'd lost. After a few seconds, when she spoke, her voice was low but strong.

"Rose… it's not going to happen, not the easy way, I'm so sorry…"

Rosalie hardly heard what Bella said after that. Something about sperm count and eggs and a hostile environment – how could her womb be a hostile environment? There was a ringing in her ears and she felt kind of spaced out – like she was coming round from an anaesthetic or something, like there was nothing she could do to break through the barriers, like she was floating, aimlessly, unable to connect with her own body. It took her a few minutes to speak after Bella stopped talking. Her friend had tears in her eyes. It struck Rosalie that that wasn't fair, that Bella should cry about it, Bella, who had and would always have Renesmee.

"I…" she started, but suddenly words were sticking in her throat. She wouldn't cry, there was no way she was going to sit in this stairwell and cry, and as long as she didn't talk, she could hold it together…

Bella reached out, almost shyly, and took Rosalie's pale hand in hers, gripping tight enough to feel slight indents from the blonde's polished and manicured fingernails.

"There are still so many options, Rose, there are still so many chances… I've pencilled you and Emmett in for a meeting tomorrow morning, if you can get out of your appointments, to go through the options…"

_Emmett. _Maybe it was selfish, but in the last, tormenting five minutes, Rosalie had thought nothing about her husband, what this would do to him too. She couldn't really begin to wrap her head around how she herself was feeling, but she could already see the emotions that would form in Emmett's eyes – guilt, torment, disbelief, pain. She wasn't sure, but it was possible it would be harder, even, for him… she knew how much it hurt him when she cried, and it hurt him a hundred times more when she was like this, when she was cold, detached, distant… and she wasn't sure she'd be able to help herself.

This time, she managed to speak. "We should… I should go back up, I should tell him." She whispered, and Bella wiped her eyes fiercely and seemed to compose herself.

"I'll see you in the morning, Rose. I love you. I love both of you."

Rosalie nodded, the thought of Edward and Bella's problems seeming so distant and apart from everything that she hardly registered what had happened before Bella had dropped the bombshell that had changed everything. Bella shifted on her feet, as if she was about to give Rosalie a hug, but then she didn't move.

"See you." Rosalie breathed, unable to make more physical contact. In that moment she was so innately jealous of Bella, despite her failing marriage and all her problems, that she thought she'd rather slap than hug the other woman. And it hurt her, that she had this anger inside her, that she couldn't seem to control it, but she didn't make eye contact as she whispered her goodbye and turned away to walk up the flights of stairs, dejected and failed.

When she reached the apartment, Annabelle wasn't in the kitchen with the others. Emmett was sat at the table, fists clenched, and she knew instantly it was the waiting, waiting to know, eating him up inside. And she had nothing good to offer him, not now. Edward was pacing up and down, and when she burst through the door he looked up in a bizarre mixture of dread and hope, his face falling as he realised Bella wasn't following. He seemed to want to say something, but nothing came out. Then, "I should… I should go after her."

Normally, Rosalie's heart would have lurched at the possibility, but she was staring right at Emmett, and she could tell from the look on his face that he could read her like an open book… he _knew._

She hardly noticed Edward leaving, muttering something incoherent as he grabbed his coat and the door closed gently behind him. She hardly heard her husband tell her that Annabelle had taken an early night after finding out who Bella was, looking shocked and guilty and slightly sick all in one. All she could do was bury herself in his arms, her head fitting perfectly in the crook of his neck, and feel his heart beat under her hands, knowing he was in this struggle with her, for the long-haul, and no matter what was being thrown at them, they were going to face it.

**A/N: Hope you liked. Again, I stress to you all: I am a massive Edward and Bella fan. I promise you a happy ending. I SWEAR.**

**Go with me. ;)**


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